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Donald Trump<\/strong>\u2019s\u00a0attacks<\/a> on\u00a0Alvin Bragg<\/strong> were escalating as the former president grew increasingly panicked that he was soon to be indicted<\/a> by the Manhattan district attorney. So a friend sent Bragg a text, expressing concern for his well-being. The DA\u2019s response was short, self-effacing, and utterly serene. It was only a text, but Bragg seemed unfazed by the maelstrom the former president was ginning up and aiming straight at him.<\/p>\n Bragg\u2019s temperament under pressure has never been in doubt\u2014not when he was a kid traveling from Harlem each day to study at a wealthy, predominantly white Upper West Side private school, not when he was a Harvard freshman\u00a0trying<\/a> to\u00a0bridge tensions<\/a> between Black and Jewish students, not when the front page of the\u00a0New York Post<\/em> was (misleadingly) blaming Bragg for a decrease in convictions. \u201cAlvin was at the center of many high-profile, challenging cases,\u201d says\u00a0Amy Spitalnick,<\/strong> a colleague during Bragg\u2019s time as New York State\u2019s chief deputy attorney general. \u201cHe brought a levelheadedness that translated to the entire team.\u201d Bragg\u2019s legal skills draw similarly consistent praise, including his work as a federal prosecutor under former United States attorney for the Southern District of New York\u00a0Preet Bharara.<\/strong> What is in question is Bragg\u2019s political judgment\u2014something that the Trump case is now severely testing.<\/p>\n Bragg, a 49-year-old father of two and a longtime Sunday school teacher, made his rookie run for public office in 2021. He announced early that he was going to challenge incumbent DA\u00a0Cyrus Vance Jr.;<\/strong> after Vance decided not to run for reelection, Bragg won a sharply contested primary that, in heavily Democratic Manhattan, was tantamount to winning the general election. Upon taking office, Bragg found himself almost immediately engulfed in controversy. A\u00a0memo<\/a> to his new staff laid out his plans: With some exceptions, the office would no longer prosecute low-level offenses such as fare evasion and prostitution, and it would seek lesser charges for certain robberies in which the accused did not \u201ccreate a genuine risk of physical harm.\u201d These positions were consistent with Bragg\u2019s campaign platform, but when the memo leaked, the Post<\/em> declared it akin to a get-out-of-jail-free card. As a result of the memo, along with Bragg\u2019s defense of bail reform and the city\u2019s climbing postpandemic crime rate, the new DA spent his first year on the defensive. Bragg tinkered with some of the policy changes, and by the end of 2022, Manhattan\u2019s shooting and homicide numbers were\u00a0declining<\/a>; other major crime categories have also been\u00a0trending down<\/a> in 2023. He also followed through on progressive initiatives, such as financing\u00a0mental health care services<\/a> for people arrested in Manhattan and funding\u00a0multiple organizations<\/a> with programs to prevent youth gun violence. But Bragg had allowed himself to be caricatured as soft on crime, something Trump and his allies are now trying to exploit.<\/p>\n Bragg inherited a Trump investigation from Vance. In February 2022, two special prosecutors hired by Vance quit, with one of them,\u00a0Mark Pomerantz,<\/strong> blasting Bragg on his way out the door, claiming the DA was committing \u201ca grave failure of justice\u201d by not charging Trump with felonies related to his allegedly falsifying financial statements (Trump denies any wrongdoing). Pomerantz subsequently wrote a book detailing his argument. Now, about a month and a half after the book was published, Bragg appears to be on the verge of indicting Trump after all, having refocused his investigation on the hush money payment (Trump denies any wrongdoing in this case as well). \u201cDid he see the light or feel the heat?\u201d asks\u00a0Tristan Snell,<\/strong> who helped lead the investigation into Trump University at the New York State attorney general\u2019s office. \u201cThey slammed the brakes and a couple of people got out of the car and started yelling at him. That\u2019s what changed.\u00a0I think it\u2019s very clear that the public reaction to not pursuing it really caught them off guard, and he realized he was out of step with his constituency.\u201d<\/p>\n People who have worked with Bragg find this interpretation implausible. Instead, they believe it was completely in character for the DA to have slowed down the Trump investigation while methodically evaluating the evidence. His team may also be incorporating valuable new witnesses and fresh evidence, including Trump\u2019s tax returns. And even Snell wholeheartedly backs Bragg against the critique that linking the murky payment to\u00a0Stormy Daniels<\/strong> with an alleged violation of federal election regulations\u2014something necessary to charge the former president with a felony\u2014is a novel,\u00a0tenuous legal strategy<\/a>. \u201cI think that criticism is ridiculous,\u201d Snell says. \u201cIt\u2019s not a novel legal theory to simply apply the plain letter of the law. Just because you haven\u2019t had a situation where that law was paired with a particular crime before does not make it a weird, far-out legal theory. It just means that this permutation of laws has never occurred before. If people are going to say that this combination of statutes is uncharted\u2014well, yeah, the combination of offenses is uncharted too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n