Alvin Bragg's Liberal Critics Are Wrong

With Matt on vacation this week, Brian hosts a conversation with Rebecca Roiphe, a New York Law School professor and former Manhattan prosecutor who enforced the very laws Donald Trump is charged with breaking in his first criminal trial. They discuss:

• Why legal commentators who criticized District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s theory of the case were factually wrong about the laws at issue and how they are applied;

• The importance of enforcing these laws, whether violators represent big businesses or small businesses, and whether their motives were financial, political, personal, or a combination thereof;

• Whether it would’ve been a breach of duty for Bragg not to bring charges in this case.

Then, paid subscribers hear a more abstract conversation about legal discourse and ethics. Why were so many legal and media elites, including many Trump critics, so eager to line up against Bragg, even as they lacked the subject-matter expertise to know whether Bragg had exceeded his mandate? Even if Bragg had gone fishing for a reason to try Trump on felony charges, would that be a violation of his ethical obligations or his oath of office? Should Trump’s status as an exceptionally high-profile political leader insulate him in any way from accountability for lower-tier felonies, even if law-enforcement officers understand him to be a serial scofflaw?

We hope you enjoy the conversation, and if you’d like to listen to the whole thing, you can upgrade to paid for a private feed that gets you access to the complete Politix archive and all future episodes.

Correction: Rebecca is a professor at New York Law School, not a New York University law school professor. Brian regrets the error.

Further reading:

• Brian on why Joe Biden should break his vow of silence and begin commenting on the hush-money case.

• Mark Joseph Stern on why he was wrong, initially, to be skeptical of Alvin Bragg’s case and what made him come around.

• There’s a new Stormy Daniels documentary on Peacock.