Alvin Bragg Is Digging His Own Political Grave | Opinion

When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg charged decorated U.S. Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny with second-degree manslaughter over the death of subway harasser Jordan Neely last week, he probably thought he was doing the bidding of the progressive constituency and leftist donors who put him in power in 2021. Although the DA initially said he would punt the case to a grand jury, angry street protests, subway blockages, and condemnations from New York City Mayor Eric Adams for insufficiently denouncing Penny appear to have caused Bragg to waffle. He ordered Penny's arrest and arraignment without further review.

Last Thursday, Penny's lawyers announced he would surrender himself the following morning. He duly appeared at around 8am on Friday for his booking and was then perp walked—silently and with great dignity—from the police station to a waiting car that took him away for further processing.

Bragg probably did not anticipate the national firestorm that his vigilant prosecution would unleash. Once news of Penny's processing was released, commentators angrily pointed out that Bragg's office had downgraded 52 percent of Manhattan violent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors in 2022, even as major crimes in New York were spiking by 30 percent. Yet here the DA decided to throw the book at a white male veteran after an altercation with a hostile subway harasser with over 40 prior arrests, and an active arrest warrant for assault.

"Racial justice," it seemed, had replaced actual justice in the streets of Gotham. After news of the charges broke, conservative influencers with millions of followers were tweeting a link to a modest collection for Penny's legal defense on the Christian website GiveSendGo. Within 24 hours, the fund increased tenfold, to nearly $400,000. It continued to rise after Penny's arrest, at a reported rate of $700 per minute, and gained further strength late Friday night, when Florida governor and anticipated Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis retweeted it. By midday on Wednesday, it had risen to more than $2.5 million and continued to climb, with donations arriving overwhelmingly in small amounts from outraged Americans all over the country.

While Penny seems assured of the best possible criminal defense, Bragg went from local progressive legal politico to national pariah. Although he denies being a politician, it is widely believed that Bragg has ambitions to higher office. Had he remained a reasonably competent New York Democrat, his state's party machinery may well have advanced him, finding value in rhetoric that appears to balance legal enforcement with a greater sense of post-George Floyd justice. Prosecuting former president Donald J. Trump, whom Bragg indicted in March, secured further liberal bona fides, at least enough for one Washington Post columnist to proclaim that his action "restores our faith in the rule of law," regardless of how weak the case appears to be.

Now, however, Bragg has indelibly become the public face of the chaos wrought by George Soros-backed progressive prosecutors—a trend that will provide powerful talking points to any honest challenger to President Joe Biden in the brewing 2024 presidential election. For his part, current Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy personally pledged $10,000 to Penny's fund, one of the highest individual contributions.

By prosecuting Penny, Bragg has magnified New York's appalling crime rate and public transportation infrastructure from risible municipal problems to a major national issue. His actions force the country to ask itself whether it should remain a secure constitutional republic or turn into a social democratic nightmare where criminals roam free while good Samaritans are punished or cowed into accepting victimization.

New Yorkers are voting with their feet—their exodus to fairer and safer places has only increased since 2020, with more on the way. But even those who remain are hard put to accept conditions in their city as good or desirable. Tales of subway "incidents" are widespread—and indeed bipartisan—and it is difficult to imagine Bragg's prosecutors obtaining a conviction given the facts of the case as the public knows them. If his case fails in court, the public perception that he went after an innocent man will be impossible to launder out of his record. If, on the other hand, the DA succeeds in obtaining a conviction, then Penny will become yet another martyr of the failed progressive experiment. And in the national court of public opinion, Alvin L. Bragg will be public enemy number one.

Paul du Quenoy is President of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.