Will Alvin Bragg be a team player or is he in it for himself?
Alvin Bragg openly admitted during his election campaign that he would make it a priority, if elected, to prosecute Donald Trump, albeit without bothering to select a law that’s been broken. Bragg is only the next batter up to try and make party politics a crime. He steps to the plate way down in the order following such heavy hitters as the FBI, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Leticia James and Merrick Garland.
If he indeed does follow through and charge the former president with a crime that he knows full well will never result in a conviction, he will do it against the express orders of the Democrat party hierarchy. The power brokers on the left, from Barack Obama all the way down to The Squad, understand that Trump the Martyr is a far more serious and dangerous a candidate than The Donald of spring 2023, who lagged in the polls behind Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
Bragg must be fending off constant phone calls and messages passed on through plenipotentiaries begging him to not file charges. One must imagine that a soft entreaty might be “Milk the pub all you can but in the end find a good excuse to drop this, make wild salacious claims when you do, but do not, under any circumstances, follow through on filing charges.”
To which Bragg’s response would likely be “Or what?” Can the party aristocracy exile him to the political gulag? Doubtful because Bragg has the race card up his sleeve to play. Like any pol, Bragg no doubt has aspirations for higher office, but he must know this move would be a career killer funding-wise.
Is there a Soros carrot out there for him to munch on? Maybe, but if he’s honest with himself he knows he’s reached his Peter Principle pinnacle. No doubt too there are Swamp Monsters on the right who fear an emboldened and reinvigorated MAGA vote, so Bragg is probably hearing pleadings from them as well through back channels. Must be nice to be king.
And above all else, kings, queens, princes & princesses on all sides are painting a picture to Bragg of a Donald Trump controlling, orchestrating, and documenting his own surrender, perp walk, mug shot and bond hearing then fashioning it all into an endless campaign infomercial loop.
D.C’s nightmare is Trump again descending the escalator and then defiantly strolling down several NY sidewalks without hordes of supporters to the police station to surrender himself then triumphantly emerging after bonding out to give a speech on Bragg’s own turf. It’s John Gotti bereft of tossing $100 bills out to the crowd. It’s a two-act play that writes itself.
But back to Bragg. Why would he go forward with a career killing indictment? Because it would mean an entrance to and a lifetime membership in ‘The Club’. He can write books that the NY Times will praise effusively no matter how bad they are. He’ll be a regular paid contributor on MSNBC. He’ll get to cackle with the hens on The View. He’ll get invited to the swankiest Upper West Side parties. Burgeoning writers, journalists and think tankers will invite him to dine at Peter Luger’s every night and he’ll never have to reach for his wallet. He’ll have schools on Martin Luther King Blvd named after him. The media pundits will fawn over him like schoolgirls at an Elvis concert because he’ll give them exactly what they’ve dreamed of ever since Election Day 2015: a mug shot of the most dangerous human being to walk the planet since Ronald Reagan left office.
Sadly, many Republicans in politics fall prey to desperately wanting the talking heads to like them -- at the expense of their dignity, too. Some of that is just a congenital condition in politicians because in their mind interspersed among the haters is always a possible vote or two. So Bragg will search his soul and in the end decide what is best for him and him alone. And once that indictment is filed, Alvin Bragg will have his day in the sun. He may even earn a Nobel Peace Prize the way Obama did.
He’ll be page one above the fold for the standard 24hr cycle then be next to the furniture ads when a judge throws the case out and admonishes him for even bringing it to court in the first place. And when he gets home after that long first day he’ll get a call from Bob Woodward, a man that did one important thing decades ago and has been gravy training off of it ever since, who will say “Congrats kid. I’m handing the torch off to you.”
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