Due to his noncompliance with state Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests for details regarding his office’s potential correspondence with the Justice Department, White House, and Democratic lawmakers regarding Bragg’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is facing two lawsuits.
Following a months-long investigation into the former president about hush-money payments made during his 2016 presidential campaign, Bragg indicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree in March.
According to Bragg, Trump fabricated company documents in New York in order to “conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”
Under suspicion that he and his office collaborated or communicated with the Justice Department, the White House, and Rep. Daniel Goldman, D-N.Y., regarding the case, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., has filed a lawsuit against Bragg. According to Heritage’s lawsuit, these moves ultimately prompted inquiries into Bragg’s behaviour by multiple U.S. House committees.
Sadly, there have been no responses to these queries. The long history of President Trump’s political opponents organising to weaponize the criminal justice system against him and thereby pervert the course of justice has given rise to concerns about these reports in many quarters, according to a filing for the initial lawsuit.
In a different case, Heritage claims that Bragg and his group obtained pro bono legal counsel from large firms that focus on white-collar crime. At this point, they are requesting that the court rule that the documents sought are “subject to release under the New York Freedom of Information Law,” order Bragg and his team to produce the requested documents, and prohibit Bragg and his team from “seeking costs and fees for the request at issue in this case.”
The group claims they have a right to access the communications between the accused parties under New York’s FOIL rules, but Bragg and his colleagues, according to Heritage, have mainly blocked their requests.
Heritage’s Oversight Project director Mike Howell stated that they think Bragg was “coordinating, or otherwise communicating” with Trump’s political opposition and that “there’s reason to believe Bragg was a “prolific communicator” via mobile.” The Oversight Project is the group’s government watchdog arm.
“The fact we have to file a lawsuit against Bragg who says he can’t produce these records and says he doesn’t have the systems to do so, is proof-positive of another dual standard of justice at play in this country,” Howell stated in an interview.
“You have a weaponized actor who’s going after the former president on a loony theory about his document retention, whereas the DA can’t even keep his own documents, and it’s in violation of the information laws he is bound by,” he added.