Trump targets Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor in his criminal case, while visiting site of fatal bodega stabbing
CNN
Donald Trump is trying to turn the tables on Alvin Bragg.
Donald Trump is trying to turn the tables on Alvin Bragg. The former president ended the second day of his hush money trial in Manhattan by visiting a Harlem bodega where, in 2022, store clerk Jose Alba stabbed an attacker, then got brought up on murder charges by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The case was dropped less than three weeks after the incident, but not before Bragg, who is now leading Trump’s prosecution, came under withering attack by the city tabloids and other mostly right-wing critics over what many – including Mayor Eric Adams – viewed as a clear act of self-defense. While the trial in Lower Manhattan will mostly keep Trump off the campaign trail, his visit to the bodega brought the campaign to the city – where anxieties over a pandemic-era rise in crime drove Adams’ mayoral campaign in 2021 and, despite rates now dropping, has made Gotham a useful cudgel for Republicans ahead of the 2024 general election. “They want law and order, they have a lot of crime, tremendous crime and their stores over there, stores are being robbed,” Trump said of bodegas in New York during his visit. The New York GOP’s message, which Trump called back to during a brief session with reporters outside the store, resonated in 2022 as Republicans won congressional seats outside the city after focusing their campaigns on public safety and worries that violent crime here would radiate out into the suburbs.
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