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      A Trump Case Awaits. Who Is the Best Prosecutor for the Job?

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      Some candidates for Manhattan’s district attorney are agents of change who want to cut the police budget. Others are very comfortable with long-established established power networks.During its 20 year run, “Law & Order” cast five different actors in the role of Manhattan district attorney, a rate of turnover that feels like science fiction given that, in reality, four people have been elected to the office in 83 years. For the past 46 of them, the position, one of the most important prosecutorial posts in the country, has been held by two people, each an aristocrat born to a political dynasty: First, Robert M. Morgenthau, son of Henry Morgenthau Jr., who served as treasury secretary under two presidents (and who was himself the son of the United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire); and since 2010, Cy Vance, son of the former secretary of state for whom he is named.In three weeks, Manhattanites will have the opportunity to vote for someone new at a pivotal moment in the history of race and social reform, during a period when leading prosecutors around the country — in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston — have been on the vanguard of the movement to reduce incarceration. The stakes would suggest a certain amount of heat, but engagement with the election has been strikingly low. In a recent poll of likely Democratic voters living in Manhattan, 44 percent said that they did not know whom they would vote for among the eight available D.A. candidates.The contender who has received the most attention is the one who has spent the most money to get it. Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a highly qualified prosecutor, leads the field in two areas: financing, having raised close to $4.5 million, an astonishing sum for a race of this kind, and the elite credentials that often make that possible. A graduate of Yale and Yale Law School, a Rhodes scholar who clerked for Merrick B. Garland and Sandra Day O’Connor, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has been, among other things, a chief adviser to Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney known for his reform work around bail, juvenile justice and diverting low-level drug offenders from the prison system.With the exception of Elizabeth Crotty, who is running a campaign so traditionally focused on public safety that police unions can’t stop endorsing her, everyone else has produced a platform that lands somewhere along the spectrum of a contemporary progressive mandate. (There is a single Republican candidate, Thomas Kenniff, but Manhattan has not elected a Republican D.A. since Thomas E. Dewey in 1937.)The issue with Ms. Farhadian Weinstein is not that she lacks the sensitivities this particular moment is calling for; rather, she offers no break in the long and dubious tradition of handing the office over to those who live at the top of an intricately knit network of wealth and power, far from the ordinary realities.The wife of hedge-fund manager Boaz Weinstein, with whom she bought a $25.5 million Fifth Avenue apartment formerly belonging to the copper heiress Huguette Clark, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has raised tens of thousands of dollars from her husband’s friends and colleagues on Wall Street. (Among them is the billionaire Ken Griffin, who built his own stunning relationship to New York real estate when he bought a condominium on Central Park South for $238 million, at the time the most expensive home ever sold in the United States.)Throughout her campaign, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has argued that none of these connections would impede her judgment, that she would prosecute financial crime fearlessly. When asked in a debate earlier this month about potential conflict of interest, she said that she would recuse herself in any instance where she had ties to the accused. But that is a solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place. When you elect a gifted lawyer to run a hugely influential office, the hope is that she’ll be available, game in hand, to advise on the biggest and most sensational cases.The chief criticism of the Vance era is that his office kowtowed to the moneyed class over and over. It laid bare the danger that comes from intimacy with the opposition and revealed the high costs of recusal. A decade ago, for instance, when Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a housekeeper in a Midtown hotel, he retained the counsel of Marc Agnifilo. As it happened, the lawyer was married to someone high up in Mr. Vance’s office — the chief of the trial division, who ordinarily would have supervised the case.Given that Karen Friedman Agnifilo had a lot of experience in sex crimes, her involvement would have been invaluable. Instead she was forced to tuck herself away. Eventually the charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn were dismissed under a case that famously collapsed. During the preceding 18 months, the Agnifilos had found themselves in similarly entangled situations two dozen times.In his acclaimed 2017 book, “The Chickenshit Club,” the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jesse Eisinger begins with the question of how it came to pass that virtually no one was prosecuted in regard to the 2008 financial crisis. He determines that a growing sense of coziness and collusion between the business and legal professions, emergent since the beginning of the current century, have limited both the ability and commitment of prosecutors to tackle corporations and the people who run them. Several years ago, Eric Holder, who has endorsed Ms. Farhadian Weinstein (she worked for him in the Obama Justice Department), briefly embraced the idea that certain banks are “too big to jail.”Tahanie Aboushi, a civil rights lawyer who is essentially a dismantlist, sits at a very different end of the continuum. She is in favor of cutting the budget of the police department by 50 percent, and her antipathy to incarceration extends to a refusal to prosecute a long list of offenses, including harassment in the second degree, which, as Ms. Farhadian Weinstein astutely pointed out in the most recent debate, would include shoving a person on a subway platform out of bias.Even the Five Boro Defenders, a group of lawyers and social justice advocates deeply sympathetic to Ms. Aboushi’s worldview, pointed out in their voting guide that they found it “concerning” that “she frequently lacked a clear understanding or vision” for accomplishing her objectives. Some opposed to Ms. Aboushi’s approach resent her inclusion in a race that they worry could detract from the other leading progressive, Alvin Bragg, the only Black candidate in the field. Nonetheless, Ms. Aboushi has the support of the influential Working Families Party.A native of Harlem, the son of a math teacher and a father who worked in social welfare, Mr. Bragg has a long and impressive résumé, having served as a federal prosecutor under Preet Bharara (who has endorsed him) and in various top positions in the state attorney general’s office. There he oversaw an investigation into the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program and found that only one-tenth of 1 percent of stops, over a period of three years, resulted in convictions for a violent crime. He also worked to repeal 50-a, the law that shielded the misbehaviors of the police from the public for so long.“The thing about Alvin is that you don’t have to worry about his sincerity as a reformer,” Zephyr Teachout, the legal scholar who challenged Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo from the left in the Democratic primary six years ago. “He has done the work.”Whoever becomes the next D.A. will inherit the case against the Trump Organization and all the major legacy potential that comes along with it. In the eyes of many New Yorkers, Manhattan’s next district attorney will either be the one to finally bring Donald Trump to account — or be remembered as the one who failed to do so. For the moment at least, there is no evidence that anyone running would need to back away from the challenge of that. More

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      Alvin Bragg for Manhattan D.A.: The Times Endorsement

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      There are few bigger jobs on the New York ballot this year than that of Manhattan district attorney. Cyrus Vance Jr., one of only two men who have held the office since 1975, isn’t seeking re-election. In a borough where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans, the winner of the June 22 primary contest is very likely to cruise to victory in November, and there is a crowded field of talented lawyers who are vying to replace him.Whoever wins the job will face a rise in shootings, homicides and other violent crimes to thwart. While warmer days are bringing back block parties and crowded parks in other boroughs, much of Midtown is still eerily empty and dotted with vacant storefronts. And as the pandemic wanes in New York, right now there are few guarantees that the rhythms of normal life will return in a manner that ensures all its residents feel protected and served by the criminal justice system.Then, of course, there is the reality that the system was not serving many New Yorkers well long before coronavirus ever arrived in the city.Manhattan will need a distinctive kind of district attorney: one who knows how to use the levers of the office to drive down the current spike in violence while moving forward with the hard and overdue work of criminal justice reform. The best person for the job is Alvin Bragg.Mr. Bragg is a talented prosecutor with the endorsement of former colleagues across a wide swath of the legal system. He served as first chief deputy at the state attorney general’s office, where he oversaw some 1,200 people and successfully sued the Trump Foundation for illegally using campaign funds — experience that could be invaluable because the next Manhattan district attorney will be left with finishing Mr. Vance’s investigation into the former president’s business dealings.Mr. Bragg also served as a federal prosecutor under Preet Bharara, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, prosecuting public corruption, wage theft and, at one point, a violent money-laundering scheme linked to the Sinaloa cartel of Mexico. Mr. Bharara has endorsed him.Mr. Bragg has worked closely with the police to prosecute complex gun cases and also sued officers over excessive force. He is currently representing Eric Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, in a case against Mayor Bill de Blasio over her son’s 2014 death at the hands of police.The Manhattan district attorney’s office is home to some of the most talented prosecutors in the country and Mr. Bragg has demonstrated he understands what can be accomplished without going to some of the political extremes we’ve heard in this election. Finding common ground among prosecutors, police leadership and the public will be crucial.Even after reforms by Mr. Vance cut the office’s caseload by more than half, nearly 80 percent of the cases prosecuted there in 2019 were misdemeanors, according to data from the office. Mr. Bragg plans to restructure the office to stop using it to criminalize poverty and focus more intensely on prosecuting violent gun crimes, sexual assault cases and corruption. He wants to dissolve the current sex-crimes unit and build a modern unit that centers the experience of survivors. He has promised to expand programs that offer alternatives to incarceration and establish a robust police integrity unit that will report directly to him. He has the management experience to get these reforms done.Mr. Bragg grew up in Harlem and came of age during the crack cocaine epidemic. He would also be Manhattan’s first Black district attorney, a remarkable fact, considering the disproportionate toll that both criminal violence and overcriminalization have taken on Black New Yorkers. The trauma that gun violence continues to inflict on people living in poverty, even as the city remains largely safe, is personal for Mr. Bragg. He says he was just 10 years old when he first had a gun pointed at him — something he experienced several more times, at the hands of police officers and others, while walking through the neighborhood in which he lived.Today, Mr. Bragg is committed to reasonable reforms to improve both policing and prosecutions and will put the work in to see them through to a safer New York. That’s why he went home to Harlem after graduating from Harvard Law School, first as a civil rights attorney, then as a prosecutor.The city’s rise in gun violence may end with the pandemic, or it may not. Either way, Manhattan needs a leader dedicated to keeping the public safe without returning to the overly punitive practices deployed for so many years.Mr. Bragg brings the experience, the nimbleness and the moral compass Manhattan needs. He deserves your vote.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Philadelphia’s Progressive District Attorney Fends Off Democratic Challenger

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      Larry Krasner, part of a new breed of prosecutors, easily defeated Carlos Vega in Tuesday’s primary in spite of a rise in gun crime.Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, won the Democratic nomination in his re-election campaign on Tuesday, easily fending off a challenge from a former prosecutor who had argued that Mr. Krasner was making the city less safe.Voters were unconvinced by that argument. When The Associated Press called the race late Tuesday night, Mr. Krasner was ahead of his rival, Carlos Vega, by almost 40,000 votes.Throughout his campaign, Mr. Krasner argued that a 40 percent increase in homicides in Philadelphia last year had nothing to do with his progressive policies, pointing to cities with more traditional prosecutors that had experienced similar trends during the coronavirus pandemic.Mr. Krasner does not prosecute some low-level offenses, such as drug possession and prostitution, and has sought more lenient sentences than his predecessors.In a speech to supporters on Tuesday night at a hotel in downtown Philadelphia, Mr. Krasner said he had been re-elected because he had kept his promises, and he claimed a mandate from the voters most affected by serious crime.“We in this movement for criminal justice reform just won a big one,” he said.Mr. Krasner’s convincing victory, achieved in spite of a sharp increase in gun crime in Philadelphia over the past two years, may indicate that the appeal of progressive prosecutors will hold steady for voters even as public safety becomes a more pressing issue.Mr. Krasner acknowledged that in his victory remarks.“We hear all this talk about how somehow progressive prosecution can’t survive,” he said. “That’s not what I see. What I see is that traditional prosecution can’t survive.”Mr. Vega acknowledged his loss in a tweet shortly before midnight on Tuesday, saying, “It looks like tonight we did not get the result we wanted, but even in defeat we have grace & we smile.”He thanked his supporters and expressed his own support for the victims of crimes. A spokesman for his campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.As in his first campaign, in which he ran against six other candidates, Mr. Krasner, 60, won significant support from Black voters in the northern and western parts of the city. Those neighborhoods have been the most affected by gun violence, and were places where Mr. Vega, 64, had hoped to make inroads.“Black voters — and not just Black voters — believe that change is necessary and that the direction that Larry Krasner is taking is the right direction,” said State Senator Vincent J. Hughes, who represents several of those neighborhoods. “This is not a close victory. It is an affirmation that we have to go in a different direction in the pursuit of justice.”Enthusiasm for what used to be a low-turnout race remained high. When all the votes are counted, including mail-in ballots, turnout will almost certainly be higher than it was four years ago, when 155,000 people voted in the Democratic primary.Mr. Vega, a longtime homicide prosecutor, was among the first employees whom Mr. Krasner fired after taking over the district attorney’s office in 2018. Mr. Vega argued that the leniency of Mr. Krasner’s policies had led to the increase in crime.Criminologists said there would be no way to prove Mr. Vega’s assertions. David S. Abrams, a professor of law and economics at the University of Pennsylvania who has tracked crime statistics across the country over the past year, said any theory would have to take into account both the rise in homicides and shootings and the overall decline in crime, at least through 2020.“It’s a mystery,” he said. “There are a ton of theories, almost none of which fit all the facts.”Mr. Vega received ample support from the police, whose powerful union poured tens of thousands of dollars into his campaign and tarred Mr. Krasner as soft on crime at every opportunity.Mr. Krasner won office four years ago as part of a new breed of progressive prosecutors. In addition to upholding his campaign pledge not to prosecute low-level crimes, he lowered the number of people in the city’s jail by more than 30 percent.That approach won him approval from voters but also a significant amount of criticism, particularly from former prosecutors and even some of his own employees. Thomas Mandracchia, who worked for Mr. Krasner for about two years, said the district attorney’s insistence on firing so many experienced lawyers had contributed to an office plagued by disorganization. But none of those criticisms appeared to put a dent in Mr. Krasner’s support on Tuesday.In November’s general election, Mr. Krasner will face Charles Peruto Jr., a Republican defense lawyer who has campaigned on a strong message of public safety, saying that it is more important than civil rights. Mr. Peruto has called Mr. Krasner’s tenure “a disgrace” and said he would drop out of the race if Mr. Vega won. More

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      With Violence Rising, Can a Gentler Prosecutor Keep His Seat?

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      PHILADELPHIA — When Larry Krasner was elected Philadelphia’s district attorney in 2017, his story made him one of the most visible of a new wave of progressive prosecutors: A lawyer who had sued the police for civil rights violations 75 times had become a top law enforcement official in one of America’s largest cities.Mr. Krasner promised to stop prosecuting drug possession and prostitution and to hold the police accountable for misconduct. But even as he wrote a triumphal book about his election and starred in a PBS documentary series, homicides and gun violence in Philadelphia were rising to levels not seen since the 1990s.Now Mr. Krasner, 60, is facing a primary challenge from a veteran prosecutor he fired, who is arguing that Mr. Krasner has made the city less safe.Public concern about racism and overincarceration in the criminal justice system during the past decade drove progressive prosecutors like Mr. Krasner, who promote less punitive approaches, into office. But that was after a long period of declining crime. Philadelphia’s Democratic primary on Tuesday poses a test of whether such candidates can continue to win elections when gun violence has risen in cities around the country.The police have seized upon the statistics to promote Mr. Krasner’s opponent, Carlos Vega, 64. Earlier this month, the police union parked a soft-serve ice cream truck outside the district attorney’s office to emphasize that Mr. Krasner had been soft on crime. (In response, Mr. Krasner’s campaign released a statement of support from Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s.)The union has given $25,200 to Mr. Vega’s campaign and has encouraged Republican voters to register as Democrats in order to vote Mr. Krasner out. Minutes after the candidates concluded their only televised debate in early May, a car streaked down Spruce Street, its rear window embossed with the message, “All Real Cops Agree. Fire Krasner.”Eight people were wounded by gunfire outside a transit station in Philadelphia in February. The city’s homicides rose 40 percent last year.Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Associated PressIn his first election, Mr. Krasner attracted a coalition of young progressives, labor unions and moderate Black voters. His road to victory has not changed. But the math may have: According to the state, more than 6,300 Republicans in Philadelphia County have become Democrats in the aftermath of the presidential election, which could mean an influx of more conservative primary voters. (That said, Mr. Krasner won his first primary by a margin of nearly 28,000 votes while running against six other Democrats.)Opponents hope that the sharp rise in gun crime over the last two years has made Mr. Krasner vulnerable. Overall, violent crime is down in Philadelphia. But between 2019 and 2020, the number of homicides rose from 356 to 499, a 40 percent increase.Mr. Krasner blames the pandemic. Mr. Vega blames Mr. Krasner.“We are arresting people with guns and there are no consequences,” Mr. Vega said. “There is a revolving door.”He said he would take a more aggressive approach toward what he said was a small group of people that were causing the violence, and would prosecute violent crimes more harshly than his opponent.Criminologists said it would be impossible to substantiate the claim that Mr. Krasner’s policies had led to more gun crime. They point out that gun violence rose sharply in many cities last year, regardless of whether their prosecutors were considered progressive.Theories for the rise in gun violence include pandemic-related factors like a halt to social services and a slowdown in the court system. Another possible factor could be a police pullback in the face of increased public scrutiny, said Richard Berk, a professor of criminology and statistics at the University of Pennsylvania, who cautioned against jumping to conclusions.Mr. Vega, a prosecutor for more than three decades, was fired by Mr. Krasner when he took office.Caroline Gutman for The New York TimesMr. Krasner said the pandemic had offered an opportunity for “a throwback culture” to “claw its way back in.” But he said that the tough-on-crime posturing of previous district attorneys had been “nonsense.”“There’s absolutely no scientific support for the notion that all that ranting and raving about the death penalty ever made anybody even a little bit safer,” he said.Mr. Krasner announced his first run in 2017, weeks after Donald J. Trump’s presidential inauguration. Amanda McIllmurray, a progressive organizer in Philadelphia, said that Mr. Krasner, who had no experience as a prosecutor, was seen as someone who might counter the president’s emphasis on law and order.“He really gave a lot of people hope at a time where we were feeling a lot of despair,” she said.Once in office, Mr. Krasner fired more than two dozen veterans including Mr. Vega, who had been a prosecutor for more than three decades.Mr. Krasner also lowered the number of people in the city’s jail by more than 30 percent, stopped prosecuting some low-level crimes and asked judges for less severe sentences.But even some of his supporters say that he can be tactless and reluctant to accept criticism, and that he has backed away from promises to eliminate cash bail and to stop holding juveniles in adult jails.“We’re at the point now where he’s not open to being challenged on how he can do better from leftists,” said A’Brianna Morgan, a police and prison abolitionist.Mr. Krasner attracted a coalition of young progressives, labor unions and moderate Black voters to win in 2017.Charles Fox/The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Associated PressMr. Krasner said that he had done a good job getting rid of “dumb, low bails for broke people on nonserious offenses,” but that he was restricted by bail laws on more serious crime, and that he had resolved a vast majority of juvenile cases in juvenile court.And he has cast Mr. Vega as an embodiment of the establishment he sought to upend. He points to Mr. Vega’s role in the retrial of Anthony Wright, a man who was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder and spent 25 years in prison before his conviction was vacated.The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, then led by Seth Williams, mounted a new trial of Mr. Wright, making him the only client of the Innocence Project ever to be retried after DNA evidence indicated his innocence. Mr. Vega was one of the prosecutors in the retrial.Mr. Vega said that it had not been his decision to retry the case but that he thought the witness testimony had been strong enough to do so. (Mr. Wright was found innocent.)Peter Neufeld, a founder of the Innocence Project, said that Mr. Vega’s actions during the retrial had been unethical and that he had misled the public about the extent of his involvement.Mr. Vega is backed by more than a hundred of his fellow ex-prosecutors, including Ed Rendell, a former Philadelphia district attorney who later became the mayor of Philadelphia and the governor of Pennsylvania.He is also supported by a number of victims’ family members who feel that Mr. Krasner has been too lenient. Among them is Aleida Garcia, whose son was murdered in 2015. Mr. Vega handled the case until 2018, at which point Mr. Krasner fired him without alerting the family. Though her son’s killer was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, Ms. Garcia was frustrated by the way Mr. Krasner’s office handled the case.“The victims don’t have a lot of say,” she said.Supporters of Mr. Vega, who is backed by Ed Rendell, the former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor.Caroline Gutman for The New York TimesMr. Krasner is relying on the coalition that backed him four years ago, including more support from a PAC associated with George Soros, which poured $1.7 million into his first race. He has raised $887,000 since Mr. Vega entered the race. Mr. Vega has raised $734,000. The winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored in the November general election against the Republican candidate, Charles Peruto Jr., a defense lawyer who says that public safety is more important than civil rights. Mr. Peruto has said he will drop out of the race if Mr. Vega wins the primary.A test for Mr. Vega will be if he can cut into Mr. Krasner’s support in neighborhoods where the gun violence is taking place, including the northern and western parts of the city. State Senator Vincent J. Hughes, whose district includes several neighborhoods experiencing violence, said he expected his constituents to continue to support Mr. Krasner and oppose the police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, or F.O.P.“They see Larry Krasner as not being afraid of the F.O.P., not being afraid to work toward justice in the truest sense of the word,” he said.Mr. Krasner said he knew that he could not claim a perfect record. He described sidewalk encounters in which voters referred to him as “trying to be fair,” saying that the phrasing initially puzzled him.“I could not figure out why the hell they were saying ‘trying,’” he said. “But when I heard it time and time again, I finally came to the conclusion that the reason they’re saying that is they don’t expect you to be perfect. They know you’re going to mess it up some of the time. They just can’t even believe you’re trying.” More

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      Why Police Accountability Is Personal for This Manhattan D.A. Candidate

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      Alvin Bragg has had encounters with the police both in the streets and in the courts. He wants to change the system from within.The first time Alvin Bragg began thinking about police accountability was not long after an officer put a gun to his head, when he was a 15-year-old in Harlem in the 1980s.Nearly 30 years later, as a prosecutor at the state attorney general’s office in 2017, Mr. Bragg found himself confronting the same issue, overseeing the case against Officer Wayne Isaacs, who was off duty when he killed Delrawn Small in the early morning in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn.The officer was charged with murder and manslaughter. Video of the shooting, prosecutors argued, appeared to contradict the officer’s account. The jury acquitted him anyway.“I felt dejected, demoralized, really upset for the family,” Mr. Bragg recalled. “I felt like our system had not worked.”Now, the issues of police accountability and public integrity that Mr. Bragg confronted as a prosecutor are at the center of his campaign to lead one of the most important district attorney’s offices in the country. Mr. Bragg, 47, a Democrat, is one of nine candidates vying for the office, and is among those seeking to balance concerns about public safety against a progressive push to make the criminal justice system less punitive.In seeking to position himself as the candidate most capable of changing the system from the inside, Mr. Bragg has leaned on his personal history — including both his street-corner and courtroom encounters with the police. And Mr. Bragg, who is the only Black candidate running, would be the first Black person to lead an office where, researchers have found, race continues to be a critical factor in nearly every part of the process.But his history leading the unit that tried Officer Isaacs — a unit charged with investigating police killings of unarmed civilians — undermines a record that sounds better than it looks, his opponents and their supporters charge. Under Mr. Bragg, the unit, then called the Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit, investigated 24 cases and brought back zero convictions. (It has not fared any better since he left, three years ago.)Officer Wayne Isaacs, center, was found not guilty after a 2017 trial; Mr. Bragg said the verdict still troubles him.  Dave Sanders for The New York Times“The Manhattan district attorney needs to be able to manage the most complicated and difficult cases, and that includes holding police accountable,” said Lucy Lang, another candidate in the race, who at a debate last week attacked Mr. Bragg’s record on police accountability. “Unfortunately, in the 24 cases of police killings that came before him, Alvin wasn’t able to hold a single officer accountable.”Mr. Bragg said that his record leading the unit, now called the Office of Special Investigation, showed only that the law makes it extremely difficult to successfully prosecute police officers.Experts agree. Though there are exceptions, including the recent conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, Mr. Bragg’s record with the unit at the attorney general’s office is not unusual. It remains extremely difficult to charge, let alone convict, police officers.Peter Neufeld, head of the Innocence Project, which works to overturn wrongful convictions, said that Mr. Bragg was fighting within a system that was heavily weighted against him. (Mr. Neufeld endorsed Mr. Bragg last month.)“It doesn’t make sense when looking at somebody who is taking on an adversary with both hands tied behind his back to measure his win-loss record,” he said.Close to homeMr. Bragg grew up on 139th Street in the heart of Harlem. Born in 1973, on the cusp of the city’s fiscal crisis, he said he learned at an early age which blocks were safe and which were not, the places he could go and the places that were best avoided.His mother, a math teacher, kept a close eye on him and made sure he focused on school, drilling him on his multiplication tables on the M10 bus and asking him to stay within the confines of their block. His father, who worked for the New York Urban League, regaled him with stories about the Willis Reed-era New York Knicks and encouraged him to get outside.There could be trouble, even close to home. When Mr. Bragg was 10 years old, he had a knife put to his neck by some teenagers in the middle of the day, in what he described as a “hazing,” but a very scary one.And then there were the police. About five years later, he was walking with a friend when an unmarked police car began driving the wrong way on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, he said. Three officers emerged from the car. One put a gun to Mr. Bragg’s head. They asked if he was dealing drugs and started going through his pockets.“You didn’t need to go to law school to know this was unlawful,” Mr. Bragg said. His interest in criminal justice started there.He went to Harvard and Harvard Law School and clerked for the federal judge Robert Patterson Jr., where he first began to see the way that prosecutors could work on behalf of public safety. After several years working as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, he became a prosecutor at the New York attorney general’s office, looking at public corruption and white- collar crime. He later worked under Preet Bharara, then U.S. attorney for the Southern District, as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, before returning to the attorney general’s office, where he focused on police misconduct.Mr. Bharara, who has endorsed Mr. Bragg, said that he had been set apart while a federal prosecutor by his concerns about police accountability and public corruption.“He’s not jumping on the bandwagon in connection with the race for office,” Mr. Bharara said. “He’s cared about these things for a long time.”Mr. Bragg, who met volunteers in Union Square this month, has sought to balance progressive ideas about the criminal justice system with public safety concerns.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesCivil Rights and Public SafetyMr. Bragg is one of nine candidates, eight Democrats and one Republican, running to replace Cyrus R. Vance Jr. as the chief prosecutor in Manhattan, a position that carries immense power to affect the criminal justice system in New York City.He has said that his overall focus will be on decreasing the number of people behind bars, that he will create a new unit to investigate police misconduct, move resources toward prosecutors investigating economic crime and overhaul the sex crimes unit. He has proposed a plan that would work to stem the flow of guns into New York from out of state.Many of Mr. Bragg’s ideas reflect the move to the left in prosecutorial elections in cities around the country in recent years — a shift that has ushered in a new breed of progressive prosecutor.Initially the race in Manhattan seemed to follow that pattern, as the majority of the Democratic candidates promoted lenient approaches to certain low-level crimes.But in recent months, as gun violence has continued to rise in New York City and another leading Democratic candidate, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, has stressed the importance of prosecuting crime, tension has grown between those pushing for leniency and those emphasizing public safety. (As of January, Mr. Bragg had raised more money than anyone other than Ms. Farhadian Weinstein and on Saturday, a racial justice organization, Color of Change, said it would spend $1 million promoting his candidacy.)Mr. Bragg has found a synthesis, based on his biography, that he hopes will persuade voters.“People care about both,” he said. “They want civil rights and public safety. Being safe is your first civil right, and we can’t have safety without community trust, which is based on civil rights.”And so he relies on his record — even when his opponents say it is unflattering. Under pressure from Ms. Lang during last week’s debate, he called the unit that has garnered zero convictions “the most transformative, transparent unit in this space in the history of this country.”Mr. Bragg has argued that the way his office worked with the victims’ families marked the beginning of a productive alliance between prosecutors and protesters, both pushing for justice. The unit was created after Eric Garner’s death in police custody in 2014; Mr. Bragg has been endorsed by Mr. Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr.Mr. Small’s brother, Victor Dempsey, said that Mr. Bragg had consulted him throughout the case against Officer Isaacs. He has endorsed Mr. Bragg’s candidacy.“Alvin has been a tremendous part in my advocacy work and my family’s advocacy work because he kind of gave us the impetus to keep fighting,” he said.But not all of Mr. Small’s family has backed Mr. Bragg. Victoria Davis, his sister, has endorsed Ms. Lang, who worked as a prosecutor under Mr. Vance.In a recent conversation, Ms. Davis said that she did not feel Mr. Bragg had done everything he could for her brother, who she said was demonized during the officer’s trial because of a tattoo. “I think he wasn’t humanized,” she said of her brother.Mr. Bragg still dwells on the acquittal of Officer Isaacs. He agreed with Ms. Davis that the defense team had successfully dehumanized Mr. Small, transforming him into what Mr. Bragg called a “Black boogeyman,” a tactic that predated the modern criminal justice system.“The part that is sad is that it works,” he said. “That racial imagery is a tie that binds throughout our history. Ultimately that’s the original sin, and we’ve got to address that.” More

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      Wall Street Is Donating to Tali Farhadian Weinstein. Is That a Problem?

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      Tali Farhadian Weinstein built up a $2.2 million war chest with help from hedge fund managers, far more than her rivals in the Manhattan district attorney race. Even had she not raised more money than her rivals, Tali Farhadian Weinstein would be a formidable candidate in the nine-way race to become the Manhattan district attorney, perhaps the most high-profile local prosecutor’s office in the country.She was a Rhodes scholar, has an elite legal résumé and is the only candidate who has worked for both the Justice Department and a city prosecutor’s office. And while most of the candidates are campaigning as reformers intent on reducing incarceration, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, 45, has staked out a slightly more conservative position, expressing concerns about guns and gangs.But what most sets Ms. Farhadian Weinstein apart from the field is her fund-raising. As of January, she had raised $2.2 million, far more than her competitors, hundreds of thousands of it from Wall Street, where her husband is a major hedge fund manager.Her opponents, legal ethicists and good government advocates have raised questions about that support, pointing out that the Manhattan district attorney, by virtue of geography, has jurisdiction over a large number of financial crimes.“It’s very difficult to see how a Manhattan D.A. candidate can accept really large and numerous donations from people who are involved in industries who could easily be the subject of that office’s attention,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a government reform group.Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, who is married to the wealthy hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein, says the donations will not influence her judgment on prosecuting cases. She notes she has not received large sums from criminal defense attorneys.“Judge me on my record,” she said. “I’ve gotten every job I’ve ever had on my own and I’ve never done a favor for anyone.”Much of Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s campaign war chest came from a small group of donors in the hedge fund industry. The founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, William A. Ackman, and his wife have contributed $70,000 to her. Kenneth Griffin, who founded Citadel, gave Ms. Farhadian Weinstein $10,000, and his colleague Pablo Salame, the head of global credit at Citadel, donated $35,000.She also received $70,800 from the founder of PointState Capital, Zach Schreiber, and his wife, as well as $55,000 from Michael Novogratz, formerly of the Fortress Investment Group, and his wife.Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, left, speaking to voters Friday on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Opponents and good government advocates have raised questions about her donors.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesThe flood of money from financiers into Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s coffers has been reported by other news outlets, most recently Gothamist. It gives her a significant advantage in the race, which is likely to be decided by a narrow margin during the Democratic primary in June.She has plastered Upper Manhattan with expensive mailers and has hosted high-profile guests on a podcast to promote her candidacy, including the author Malcolm Gladwell and two U.S. senators — Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.The heavy support from New York’s ultrawealthy in finance has surprised longtime campaign consultants watching the race, including some working on behalf of her opponents.George Arzt, a onetime adviser and campaign spokesman for Robert M. Morgenthau, who was Manhattan district attorney for decades, said he had “never seen such eye-popping numbers for individual donations in a D.A.’s race.” Mr. Arzt is currently working with another candidate, Liz Crotty. “Whatever happened to the sheriff of Wall Street?” he added.‘She was not a shrinking violet’Ms. Farhadian Weinstein came to the United States in 1979 as a 4-year-old, the daughter of Jewish parents from Iran who fled the revolution and applied for asylum.The uncertainty she felt as a young person, knowing the government could change her life at any moment, affected her career path, she said. “I think now there was always an impulse to be on the other side and to be a decision maker,” she said.After graduating from Yale Law, she was offered clerkships with Merrick B. Garland, who was then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. At the U.S. Department of Justice, she worked as a counsel under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who remembers her as a fierce debater.“She had really good judgment and the guts to challenge people at the Justice Department,” said Mr. Holder, who has endorsed Ms. Farhadian Weinstein. “She was not a shrinking violet.”Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s courage was tested when, as a federal prosecutor pregnant with her third child, a defendant charged with murder threatened to hire someone to kidnap her and cause her to lose the pregnancy.For weeks, federal marshals had to escort her. She was told she could come off the case, if it would make her more comfortable, but she stayed on until the baby was born.Later, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein served for several years as the general counsel to the Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, one of the most progressive local prosecutors in the country.Ms. Farhadian Weinstein with the Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, in 2019. She is the only candidate who has worked for both the Justice Department and a city prosecutor’s office.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesStill, she has tacked to the right of her competitors in the race for Manhattan district attorney. She has been less prone than several of her rivals, for instance, to pledge that she would not prosecute certain categories of low-level crime.“It’s very easy and simplistic to insist on bright-line rules,” she said. “The hard work of prosecutorial discretion is having policies but also allowing for discretion to do justice in individual cases.”The possibility of conflictsThe Manhattan district attorney’s office has long overseen many investigations into wrongdoing in the worlds of finance, real estate and other lucrative industries based in the borough. Mr. Morgenthau, the predecessor of the current district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., was known for taking a particularly tough line against white-collar crime.Under Mr. Vance, the office’s reputation for taking on the powerful lessened, in part because of criticism he drew over donations from lawyers for Harvey Weinstein and former President Donald J. Trump, who were under investigation. Mr. Vance eventually decided to stop accepting donations from lawyers with pending cases.For her part, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has declined to accept donations of more than $1 from defense lawyers, firms with a defense law practice or lawyers who work at firms with a defense law practice, saying that donations from lawyers who appeared before the district attorney’s office created the most potential for conflicts of interest. She brushed off the suggestion the donations from people in finance might create such conflicts if she were to win.“Anybody is a would-be witness or target or a subject of an investigation,” she said. “That’s diffuse.”Some of her opponents disagree. “By running a campaign that’s so tied to Wall Street, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has put herself at a real political and frankly ethical disadvantage,” said Jamarah Hayner, the campaign manager for Tahanie Aboushi, who is running on a platform to shrink the size and power of the district attorney’s office.Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University and an expert in legal ethics, said in an interview that while Ms. Farhadian Weinstein had violated no ethics rule, she should not have accepted the donations.“The fact that this is the Manhattan D.A. and Manhattan is the financial capital of the country if not the world says to me that this candidate should not be raising large sums from hedge fund interests,” he said.All told, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has received at least 21 donations of $30,000 or more. (The maximum allowable is about $38,000.) Her opponent Alvin Bragg, who was the runner-up in the money race in January, when candidates last filed disclosures, had received only two donations of that size. Ms. Aboushi had received only one similarly hefty donation, from the professional basketball player Kyrie Irving.Leaders at her husband’s fund, Saba Capital, have collectively given Ms. Farhadian Weinstein more than $105,000.In 2020, Mr. Weinstein gave the maximum allowable donations to Ritchie Torres and Adriano Espaillat, two congressmen who have endorsed Ms. Farhadian Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has also donated thousands of dollars in past years to Senators Booker and Gillibrand, who appeared on Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s podcast, “Hearing.”Ms. Farhadian Weinstein bristles at questions about her husband’s influence on her, calling them “deeply disappointing and sexist.” To answer critics, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein asked Judge Jonathan Lippman, the former chief judge of New York State, to advise her on what conflicts might arise because of her husband’s business. (Broadly speaking, Mr. Weinstein trades highly complex financial instruments.)Judge Lippman said in an interview he did not anticipate Mr. Weinstein’s business would create conflicts of interest, but he laid out steps she could take to ensure any potential investigation would remain independent. He did not look closely at Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s fund-raising, but said he did not find it unusual or concerning. “It goes with the terrain of running for public office,” he said.Zephyr Teachout, a lawyer and former candidate for governor who has worked extensively on public corruption matters, said the Wall Street money Ms. Farhadian Weinstein had amassed “raises all kinds of red flags.”“It’s really problematic and distorting to have so much Wall Street cash in this race because the D.A. is responsible for enforcing white-collar criminal law in Manhattan,” she said. “We are talking about an enormous amount of money that common sense tells you has the power to shape judgment.” More

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      Who Will be the Next Manhattan D.A.? 8 Candidates Who May Prosecute Trump

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      Who will be the next Manhattan district attorney? The race is dominated by low-profile progressives who could reshape law enforcement in New York City.The race to become Manhattan’s next district attorney is shaping up to be one of the most important in decades, a watershed contest that is likely to fundamentally change the mission of the prominent office and may affect the future of former President Donald J. Trump.Yet the eight candidates are all relative unknowns, and, with no public polling, there is no clear front-runner. The victor is likely to win the general election in November without having received a majority of votes in the Democratic primary.Most of the candidates believe prosecutors should be sending fewer people to prison, especially for minor crimes, and that the office should play an active role in creating a less punitive, less racially biased criminal justice system.The election is being watched as a test of what a borough considered to be a liberal bastion wants from its head prosecutor, and just how deeply voters want the criminal justice system to change.“The Manhattan D.A.’s office is justifiably seen as one of the premier offices in the country,” said Eric H. Holder Jr., the United States attorney general under President Barack Obama. “What happens in the D.A.’s office will have an outsized influence on the path of reform around the country.”The current officeholder, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., announced earlier this month that he would not seek re-election.Mr. Vance, who has no plans to endorse a candidate, has held the position for three terms and was the handpicked successor of Robert M. Morgenthau, who over four decades built the office’s reputation as one of the largest and most ambitious prosecutorial agencies in the country.Mr. Vance’s announcement catapulted the race into the national spotlight, as his successor stands to inherit an investigation into whether Mr. Trump and his company committed fraud to obtain loans and tax benefits.The race can be divided into two camps, with three candidates who have not worked as prosecutors and five who have.The candidates who have never prosecuted a case — Tahanie Aboushi, Eliza Orlins and Dan Quart — have argued that the core work of the district attorney’s office needs to be revamped, shifting toward reducing incarceration and cutting back prosecution of low-level crimes.Four of the former prosecutors — Alvin Bragg, Lucy Lang, Tali Farhadian Weinstein and Diana Florence — largely agree. But they have pitched themselves as occupying a middle ground, focused on less sweeping changes. A fifth former prosecutor, Liz Crotty, has been less vocal in calling for systemic change.Ranked-choice voting — which allows voters to express who they would support if their top choice does not win — will not be used in the primary on June 22.That means whoever gets the biggest slice of votes in the Democratic primary, even if far from a majority, will go on to the general election. There, victory is almost certain because so far there are no Republicans on the ballot.The ‘progressive prosecutor’ movementIn the decade since Mr. Vance took office in 2010, views of criminal justice have shifted in many urban centers, transforming elections for local prosecutors.Activists — most prominently those in the Black Lives Matter movement — have used social media platforms to raise awareness of police violence, mass incarceration and racial bias in the justice system.“We as a general society are seeing on a larger scale how things like police violence are impacting people’s lives,” said Nicole Smith Futrell, a law professor at the City University of New York.Starting with the election of Kenneth P. Thompson as the Brooklyn district attorney in 2013, voters have rewarded candidates across the country who have focused on prosecutorial and police misconduct.These politicians — often grouped together as “progressive prosecutors” — have included Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Kim Foxx in Chicago and George Gascón in Los Angeles.Tali Farhadian Weinstein, right, was general counsel to the Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, left.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesIn New York City, Eric Gonzalez, who was elected as Brooklyn district attorney in 2017, said he wanted to lead “the most progressive D.A.’s office in the country.” A former public defender, Tiffany Cabán, who pledged to stop prosecuting low-level crimes, lost the race for Queens district attorney by the slimmest of margins in 2019.The candidatesMost of the candidates competing to succeed Mr. Vance said that they will redirect the power wielded by the Manhattan district attorney. Others have pledged to fundamentally reduce it.Ms. Aboushi, 35, has pointed toward her adolescent experience of seeing her father convicted on federal conspiracy charges related to the theft of trucks transporting cigarettes. He was sent to prison for 22 years. Ms. Aboushi has said she wants to keep the district attorney’s office from harming families like her own.Along with Ms. Orlins, she has committed to cutting the office in half. She has also stressed the use of alternatives to prison. She has won support from the left and has been endorsed by the Working Families Party, a power player in New York.Ms. Aboushi, who has worked at her family’s law firm since 2010, would be the first woman, Muslim and nonwhite candidate to hold the office. (Every contender except for Mr. Quart would break at least one such barrier.)Ms. Orlins and Mr. Quart are running campaigns in a similar vein. Ms. Orlins, 38, a longtime public defender, has a fiery social media presence and often mentions the damage that she said prosecutors did to her clients. She has pledged not to prosecute the majority of misdemeanors.“I saw clients getting cycled through the system, getting locked up, getting bail set, getting offered ridiculous plea deals, spending a month or two months in jail for these low-level minor offenses,” she said.Mr. Quart, 47, a seven-term assemblyman and the only candidate with any previous political experience, has argued that he is the only person running who has already changed the system. He points to his role in successful efforts to repeal laws that protected police from accountability and put thousands of people in jail for low-level crimes.“My experience is about not just the rhetoric of reform, but actually achieving it,” Mr. Quart said.Assemblyman Dan Quart (D-Manhattan) is the only candidate with experience in politics.Patrick Dodson for The New York TimesAll three have argued that it is a virtue never to have prosecuted anyone, suggesting that the very act of prosecution should bear some stigma. By contrast, the ex-prosecutors in the race sprinkle suggestions for change with specifics on how to curtail certain crimes.Alvin Bragg, 47, the only Black candidate, seems comfortable running both as a reformer and a career law-enforcement official. Mr. Bragg, who was a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and later chief deputy attorney general in New York, was the only candidate to appear at both a “decarceral debate” held by public defenders and a forum organized by alumni of the Manhattan district attorney’s office — audiences with opposing viewpoints..css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cz6wm{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cz6wm{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1cz6wm:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1cz6wm{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}Your Questions About Donald Trump’s Taxes, AnsweredYes. Hours after the Supreme Court rejected Mr. Trump’s final bid to defy a 2019 subpoena, millions of pages of records were turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is now combing through them.The investigation is wide-ranging, but one particular area of concern is whether Trump’s company manipulated its property values, inflating them to obtain favorable loans while lowballing them to reduce its taxes. Investigators have also focused on the company’s long-serving chief financial officer.The records turned over to the district attorney’s office will remain private unless they are presented as evidence at a trial, but The Times has already uncovered a variety of potential financial improprieties, based on more than two decades of Mr. Trump’s tax data.If the district attorney were to indict Mr. Trump — far from a sure thing — the result would be the potential criminal trial of a former president. For his part, Mr. Trump has dismissed the investigation as a politically motivated “fishing expedition” and vowed to “fight on.”Mr. Bragg has leaned on his roots in Harlem. He often brings up the half-dozen times he has had a gun pointed at him, including three encounters involving police officers. He has said he wants to reduce unnecessary incarceration and fight crime.“One thing we need to reject is this false dichotomy that you’ve got between civil rights and public safety,” he said.Mr. Bragg’s closest competitor in straddling the two camps is Lucy Lang, who worked at the Manhattan district attorney’s office for 12 years. Ms. Lang, 40, is steeped in policy and has released the outlines of her approach to dozens of issues, from sex crimes to restorative justice. She presents herself as someone who would change the office but also has the experience to manage high-profile cases.Tali Farhadian Weinstein, 45, a former federal prosecutor and general counsel in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, is running a more conservative campaign than her colleagues and has a substantial lead in fund-raising. She has been endorsed by Mr. Holder, with whom she worked at the Department of Justice.Though she emphasizes her experience in Brooklyn, where she led a unit that reviews convictions, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has also been direct in describing her approach to prosecution. “You can’t just identify the problem,” she said. “You also then have to have a positive agenda about what the solution is.”The final two candidates stand apart from the field for different reasons.Ms. Florence, 50, is also a veteran of the Manhattan district attorney’s office and spent much of her career prosecuting fraud and corruption cases. She wants the office to refocus its energy on cases against the powerful.But she must overcome a significant hurdle: She resigned from the office after a judge found that she had withheld evidence from defense lawyers in a major bribery case, a serious ethical violation. A spokeswoman for Ms. Florence’s campaign said she has taken “full responsibility” for the mistake.Ms. Crotty, 50, a former assistant district attorney under Mr. Morgenthau, has conformed least to the blueprint set by the other contenders. Though she acknowledges systemic racism, she is loath to call for systemic solutions, saying instead that she will evaluate matters on a case-by-case basis. She has pledged to strengthen the office’s investigations of white-collar crime.The Trump investigationMr. Vance is likely to decide whether to seek an indictment against Mr. Trump before he leaves office. If he does, the next district attorney will have to handle the prosecution of a former president.The candidates have been reluctant to discuss the case in detail, saying it would be unethical to offer an opinion without seeing the evidence firsthand.It is unclear how the prospect of a trial of a former president might influence voters. Some strategists say it would matter little. Others say it favors experienced prosecutors.“This is Manhattan,” said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Mr. Vance’s former deputy. “You’re going to have high-profile, high-interest, serious crimes. You need people who know how to handle those cases.” More

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      Cyrus Vance Will Not Run Again for Manhattan D.A.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Trump’s TaxesWhat’s NextOur InvestigationA 2016 WindfallProfiting From FameTimeline18 Key FindingsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNew Adversary Looms for Trump as Vance Exits Manhattan D.A. RaceThe decision by Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney since 2010, sets off a scramble for the office and makes it likely a new prosecutor will inherit an investigation into the former president’s business.Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who has been Manhattan district attorney since 2010, has told his staff he will not stand for re-election.Credit…Desiree Rios for The New York TimesMarch 12, 2021Updated 9:21 a.m. ETCyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, announced on Friday he would not run for re-election, setting off a wide-open race to lead one of the most important crime-fighting offices in the country and making it highly likely that any potential case against President Donald J. Trump will be left in a newcomer’s hands.Mr. Vance made the long-expected announcement in a memo to his staff early Friday morning, just weeks before the filing deadline for the race. The many candidates clamoring to replace him are, with few exceptions, seeking to fundamentally reshape the office.A scion of one of Manhattan’s well-known liberal families, Mr. Vance is one of only four people to be elected Manhattan district attorney in nearly 80 years. He took office in 2010 and presided over the office during a decade when crime numbers plummeted and attitudes toward the criminal justice system changed.Mr. Vance was the handpicked successor of Robert M. Morgenthau, who served for 35 years and built the office’s reputation as one of the largest and most ambitious prosecutorial agencies in the country. When Mr. Vance took the helm, he vowed to stick to the practices that he said had served the office in good stead for years. He said while campaigning that he would not attempt to fix what was not broken.But at times, Mr. Vance, 66, seemed to be swimming against the current of public opinion in his liberal district, as the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements raised awareness of ingrained biases in the criminal justice system and led to calls for wholesale reform.The eight-way race to succeed Mr. Vance reflects those newer political currents. Three of the candidates running to be New York County’s lead prosecutor have no prosecutorial experience at all. The five others in the race have distanced themselves from Mr. Vance, including two who worked in his office, Lucy Lang and Diana Florence, who rarely mention his tenure in a positive light.Mr. Vance’s announcement, first reported in The New Yorker, was widely expected. He had not been actively raising money or campaigning.During his three terms in office, Mr. Vance won praise for pioneering data-driven methods to more effectively target violent crime, but was faulted in some quarters for being too tentative when investigating powerful figures.“He was cautious in what high-profile cases he brought,” said Marc F. Scholl, a veteran of the district attorney’s office who left for private practice in 2017. “He was more interested in not making mistakes than anything else.”Mr. Vance’s critics have focused on his handling of sex crime investigations, starting with the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund who was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel housekeeper in 2011. Mr. Vance dropped the charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn after prosecutors in his office raised questions about the victim’s credibility.After the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn fell apart, Mr. Vance said that his success or failure could only be measured over time. Some of his most notable victories have involved the same figures whom critics said he had treated leniently earlier in his tenure.For instance, in 2015, Mr. Vance chose not to press charges against the movie producer Harvey Weinstein, whom an Italian model had accused of groping her during an interview in his SoHo office. She later obtained an incriminating tape of him talking about the incident, but charges were dropped over prosecutors’ concerns a jury would not believe her.But in 2018, the year after decades of allegations against Mr. Weinstein set off the Me Too Movement, Mr. Vance brought the first criminal charges against him. Mr. Vance won a major victory in February 2020 when Mr. Weinstein was found guilty of felony sex crimes against two women. The following month, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison.Mr. Vance also drew fire, then praise, for his dealings with Mr. Trump.After Mr. Trump rose to power, the district attorney was criticized for a 2012 decision to end a criminal investigation into fraud allegations against Mr. Trump and two of his children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr.Prosecutors had been looking into whether the Trumps misled investors in a condominium project. Mr. Vance said the investigation ended in part because victims would not cooperate after having reached a civil settlement with the Trump family.For many Democrats, however, few of Mr. Vance’s triumphs loom larger than his dual wins at the Supreme Court as he later sought to investigate Mr. Trump and his business. Prosecutors are examining whether Mr. Trump fraudulently manipulated property values to obtain loans and tax benefits.In July of last year, the justices declared that Mr. Vance’s office — and by extension, all state prosecutors — had the right to seek evidence from a sitting president in a criminal investigation, setting a lasting limit on the scope of presidents’ powers and immunity from prosecution.And last month, the justices rejected in a brief unsigned order a last-ditch attempt to block Mr. Vance’s subpoena for Mr. Trump’s tax and financial records.“I don’t know how many local prosecutors could do that,” said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Mr. Vance’s longtime deputy. “Just the ability to bring that case, go to the Supreme Court and now to be in possession of Donald Trump’s tax returns and doing a sweeping criminal investigation into the former president of the United States.”Mr. Vance was slower than some other big-city prosecutors when it came to certain reforms popular with progressives — Manhattan prosecutors were still taking on low-level marijuana cases as late as 2018 — but he did seek to reshape the office.In response to crime dropping to lows not seen since the mid-20th century, his office cut total prosecutions by more than half and invited the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform, to examine its record on racial disparities in prosecution..css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cz6wm{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cz6wm{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1cz6wm:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1cz6wm{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}Your Questions About Donald Trump’s Taxes, AnsweredYes. Hours after the Supreme Court rejected Mr. Trump’s final bid to defy a 2019 subpoena, millions of pages of records were turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is now combing through them.The investigation is wide-ranging, but one particular area of concern is whether Trump’s company manipulated its property values, inflating them to obtain favorable loans while lowballing them to reduce its taxes. Investigators have also focused on the company’s long-serving chief financial officer.The records turned over to the district attorney’s office will remain private unless they are presented as evidence at a trial, but The Times has already uncovered a variety of potential financial improprieties, based on more than two decades of Mr. Trump’s tax data.If the district attorney were to indict Mr. Trump — far from a sure thing — the result would be the potential criminal trial of a former president. For his part, Mr. Trump has dismissed the investigation as a politically motivated “fishing expedition” and vowed to “fight on.”He also poured money into community organizations that helped with crime prevention, and re-entry for those who had been incarcerated.The funds came from the $800 million Mr. Vance obtained for the office through asset forfeiture — money reaped from settlements with big banks accused of violating federal sanctions. He used the windfall as seed money to fund various programs.Perhaps the most expansive use of that money was its funding of a program to eliminate the nationwide backlog of rape kits — which preserve DNA evidence left by an assailant — in more than a dozen states. The push to clear that backlog has led to hundreds of prosecutions in unsolved cases and more than 100 convictions.Mr. Vance also put to rest an older case that had haunted the city for decades. In 2017, a jury convicted a former bodega worker of killing Etan Patz, a boy who disappeared in SoHo on his way to school in 1979, changing the way many American parents thought about protecting their children.The campaign to replace Mr. Vance has been dominated by talk of deep changes to the criminal justice system. Two of the candidates, Tahanie Aboushi and Eliza Orlins, have vowed to reduce the size of the Manhattan district attorney’s office, currently the largest local prosecutor’s office in the country, by 50 percent or more in order to limit its power.One potential strike against those candidates — as well as Dan Quart, a state assemblyman — is their lack of prosecutorial experience, which each has touted as a virtue. When it comes to a possible case against Mr. Trump, veterans of the office have argued, there is little substitute for having handled complicated investigations and high-pressure prosecutions.But some progressive Democrats say that the candidacies of Ms. Aboushi, Ms. Orlins and Mr. Quart reflect a hunger for changes in how prosecutors handle cases in Manhattan that acknowledge the harm the system has done to Black people and other marginalized communities.Janos Marton, a leader in New York’s movement to reduce incarceration, was a candidate to replace Mr. Vance until he dropped out of the race in December. He said Mr. Vance and his assistants, despite having tried at times, had not kept pace with reforms prosecutors were adopting elsewhere, like in Philadelphia, Chicago and even Brooklyn.“They enacted really punitive policies against low-income communities of color and even the reforms that they occasionally would embrace were quite far behind the curve,” he said.The investigation into the Trump organization is ongoing. Last month, The New York Times reported that Mr. Vance had enlisted a former federal prosecutor with expertise in organized crime and white collar crime to help with the inquiry. If it results in charges, Mr. Vance’s successor will almost certainly oversee the case.Mr. Vance’s announcement will inevitably prompt considerations of his legacy. But if he does bring charges against Mr. Trump, that action, and the success or failure of the resulting case, may single-handedly determine how Mr. Vance is remembered.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More