Some have found the case weak, while the defendants and their allies continue to argue, without providing evidence, that it was a politically motivated attack on Trump, the leading Republican candidate in this year’s presidential election.
Those who knew Mr. Bragg said he approached the prosecution the same way he approached many other cases: quietly and matter-of-factly, undaunted by relentless political attacks and committed to pursuing novel legal theories that he believed made sense.
“Our job is to follow the facts and the law without fear or favoritism, and that’s exactly what we did here,” Bragg said at a news conference after the verdict.
Among elected officials Bragg said he could have used the opportunity to prove his innocence. He praised the trial team, jury, police and court system for the challenge of hosting an unprecedented first-of-its-kind trial, saying he was “grateful to have had the opportunity to work alongside such incredible public servants.”
Bragg declined to comment for this article but also nodded to the Manhattan district attorney’s office’s tradition of prosecuting Trump as part of a storied tradition of confronting powerful figures and others who allegedly betray the public trust.
Bragg’s indictment last spring marked the first time a former U.S. president has faced criminal charges. It was the first of four criminal complaints that will dog Trump as he seeks his party’s nomination again. The other cases in Washington, Florida and Georgia are stalled by pretrial motions and appeals and are unlikely to go to trial anytime soon.
Trump was convicted in New York of participating in a scheme to cover up a $130,000 bribe to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. This is to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump several years ago. The jury found that Trump falsely classified compensation to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to protect his chances of winning the case.
Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor and now a private attorney, said Bragg “handled this case beautifully, despite the intense public scrutiny of every move he made,” and that he maintained control after the trial, focusing on the jury rather than himself.
Like other law enforcement officials who have opposed President Trump, Bragg was Manhattan’s first black district attorney. He has been inundated with racist hate messages and threats of violence. Last year, investigators received around 600 threats against Mr Bragg, his family and staff.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), who successfully sued Trump’s namesake company for a decade of fraud, has also been attacked by Trump and his supporters for racist and sexist tirades.
Instead of responding to the constant attacks, Bragg remained silent and limited his duties to what his team presented in court.
“I don’t think he was ever swayed one bit from what he thought was the right thing to do,” said Xavier Donaldson, a former prosecutor who knew Bragg from the beginning of his career as district attorney.
Mr. Bragg, a Harlem native and graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, is viewed in New York legal circles as a man of professional decency and professionalism in his work. Mr. Donaldson and others who knew Mr. Bragg from his days as a federal prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office and the New York State Attorney General’s Office said they were not surprised by his calm under pressure.
Bragg “stayed true to his principles and was very quiet about it. He was committed to prosecuting cases that he thought should be prosecuted,” said Donaldson, who now works in private practice. “You don’t want to antagonize someone like that, because they’re committed to doing the right thing for the right reasons.”
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a Trump ally, has tried to drag Bragg into overt political sideshow. This month, Jordan called for Bragg to testify at a congressional hearing on the weaponization of the federal government. Bragg last year appealed to Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, to stop trying to use his position to intervene in the case.
Jordan convened a New York committee hearing on public safety shortly after Bragg indicted Trump, in a move widely seen as a partisan ploy to portray the district attorney as someone who has not done enough to eradicate crime and whose policies have increased the sense of insecurity in the city.
Since he begins his four-year term in 2022, Bragg has faced a firestorm of criticism from police unions and residents who say he has been too lax on crime.
Bragg responded carefully to the complaints, highlighting a number of successful investigations his office has conducted, including efforts to significantly reduce crime in some neighborhoods by dealing with traffickers of untraceable weapons known as “ghost guns” and using community programs to intervene in the lives of at-risk children.
By choosing to file the hush-money lawsuit against Trump, Bragg broke with his former colleagues in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, who investigated the matter and indicted Cohen but declined to indict Trump.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to violating campaign finance laws by alleging that the hush money benefited the Trump campaign and exceeded contribution limits. He served prison time for that crime, as well as for tax evasion and lying to Congress.
Federal prosecutors were unable to indict Trump in 2018 because of a Justice Department ban on indicting a sitting president. Prosecutors concluded that a case against Trump was too risky once he left office, because it would have relied heavily on the testimony of Cohen, who was then a disbarred and convicted felon, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.
Bragg’s lawyers told the jury that Cohen’s testimony was backed up by a trove of evidence, including text messages, bank records, meeting notes and nine repayment checks that Trump personally signed while in office and which he claimed were actually routine legal fees.
During the trial, prosecutors laid out a complex theory of the case that required jurors to agree that it was reasonable to conclude that Trump falsified records with the intent to influence the 2016 election and that in doing so he violated one of three state laws.
After weeks of testimony and less than two full days of deliberations, the jury found Bragg’s hunch correct.
Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.
