Bragg Refuses to Share Evidence

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) rejected a request from House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that he share the evidence he used to persuade a NY grand jury to indict former President Donald Trump. Leslie Dubeck, general counsel for Bragg’s office, explained that "all grand jury proceedings are secret. All the evidence needed to convict the defendant will be revealed at his trial. Spectators like members of Congress will see and hear that evidence during or after the trial."

Jordan found Dubeck's reply "unsatisfying. As we have seen in other politically motivated prosecutions carried out by Democrats, key exculpatory evidence has been withheld. This creates a suspicion that the evidence that will be presented at President Trump's trial might be similarly one-sided. It is the prosecution's legal obligation to share all the evidence it has uncovered regardless of whether it supports or rebuts its case."

Bragg called Jordan's attempt to gain access to the evidence "an effort to usurp my authority. As the duly elected District Attorney for Manhattan it is my prerogative to decide how to prosecute my case against Trump. I can assure you that I won't be bogged down by demands to include the kind of irrelevant details that folks like Mr. Jordan would like to raise in order to confuse the jurors who will decide if Trump should go to prison."

The DA went on to disingenuously claim that "keeping the details out of the hands of Congress is for the protection of the defendant's privacy. Ideally, if the whole trial were held in secret the defendant could be spared the indecent exposure of having the lurid details of his crimes become known to the general public. I'm doing my best to try to get as close to this ideal as I can in the current political climate."