Judiciary Committee members are hauling in their New Yorker colleagues for Monday’s high-profile crime hearing.
Republicans, led by Chairman Jim Jordan, have waived Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik onto their panel for the field hearing designed to knock Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and crime policies in New York City.
Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman will be cleared to join the panel by his colleagues, a source familiar with the committee’s plans told DailyMail.com. His Manhattan-Brooklyn district includes the Javitz Federal Building, where the panel will hear witness testimony Monday at 10 a.m.
Goldman, multimillionaire heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and lead counsel on Trump’s first impeachment, will join a Democrat panel trying to cast GOP attacks on Bragg as politically motivated interference with a criminal investigation and a way to carry water for Trump. Bragg indicted Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records last week.
Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman will be cleared to join the panel by his colleagues, a source familiar with the committee’s plans told DailyMail.com
Republicans, led by Chairman Jim Jordan, have waived Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik onto their panel for the field hearing designed to knock Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and crime policies in New York City
‘Chairman Jordan is not welcome in my district for this political stunt that is simply a further waste of taxpayer money to support Donald Trump’s legal defense,’ Goldman said of the upcoming hearing.
Stefanik will join a team of Judiciary Republicans hungry to cast Bragg as a George Soros-backed liberal prosecutor more focused on taking down Trump than crime in his backyard.
The congresswoman represents a district hours north of New York City but is the only member of House GOP leadership from New York State.
‘I look forward to holding Democrats accountable for their failure to prosecute crimes and instead engage in illegal political witch-hunts against their political opponents,’ Stefanik said of joining the committee.
Goldman was House Democrats’ lead counsel when they impeached Trump over his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he withheld Congressionally-approved military aid while pressuring the leader to open an investigation into Trump’s then-opponent, President Joe Biden.
Stefanik will join a team of Judiciary Republicans hungry to cast Bragg as a George Soros-backed liberal prosecutor more focused on taking down Trump than crime in his backyard.
Republicans, led by Chair Jim Jordan, are holding a field hearing to knock Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his crime policies
He made prosecuting Trump front and center to his congressional campaign, saying in a TV interview upon announcing his candidacy: ‘I am running for Congress and this new 10th district because I want to get on the front lines, and back in the trenches like I did during the impeachment.’
Both prosecutors by background, Bragg and Goldman’s ties run deep – they’ve both long been active in the city’s criminal justice space. Republicans say they share the same lenient crime policies.
Goldman voted against a resolution of disapproval for the D.C. crime bill that President Biden later signed and in 2022 advocated for increasing social workers and mental health experts to respond to domestic violence disputes rather than police officers.
In 2021 he endorsed ‘friend and former [Southern District of New York] colleague’ Bragg for the district attorney’s job and donated $7,500 to his campaign. The 47-year-old father of five hosted a fundraiser for Bragg at his multi-million dollar Tribeca home.
Bragg’s former campaign adviser and top government aide, Ritchie Fife, also consulted Goldman’s campaign. Rei Ma, the finance director for Bragg’s campaign, became the finance director for Goldman’s campaign 5 months later.
Bragg and Goldman hosted a fundraiser together in April 2021 to discuss ‘Donald Trump and what’s at stake for the next #ManhattanDA.’
In 2022 as he was running for the 10th district seat he said he ‘feels what everybody else feels about being scared to go on the subway and taking kids to school.’
In 2021 he admitted that New York City is experiencing a ‘rampant’ and ‘scary’ crime wave.
‘You’ve got people randomly being shot on the subways. You’ve got people randomly being thrown into car trunks,’ he said on the Mary Trump show, hosted by Donald Trump’s niece.
But in 2022 he flip-flopped on the matter of New York City’s controversial bail reform.
In an August 2022 debate, he said: ‘We cannot allow people to just continue to cycle through the system because it’s demoralizing to the cops, and it gives everyone a perception of danger.’
The city’s 2019 overhaul made most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies ineligible for bail.
Days after the August 2022 debate Goldman said he did not agree with cash bail.
‘I don’t agree with the fundamental premise of [cash] bail, which is that people should not stay in jail because they can’t pay bail,’ the then-candidate said.
‘Whether or not the data says that it’s safe or not, there is a perception in the city that it is not safe,’ he said, asked about the bail reform. ‘And one of the reasons for that is the perpetual recidivism that is going on.’
The congressman, who as a prosecutor said in a June 10 interview he would ‘knowledgeably reduce crime in the city,’ has also advocated for ‘getting non-violent offenders out of the system.’
Goldman has long advocated for making the justice system more ‘fair’ and reducing incarceration rates.
He’s advocated for closing Rikers Island prison and in law school wrote an article for the Stanford Law Review entitled ‘The Modern-Day Literacy Test?: Felon Disenfranchisement and Race Discrimination,’ where he seemed to suggest felons should be given the right to vote.
While in law school, Goldman also worked on a book with Michelle Alexander entitled ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.’
Meanwhile, from the start of 2022 when he took office to November of this year, Bragg downgraded 52 percent of felony cases to misdemeanors. When he did bring forth a case, his office won a conviction just 51 percent of the time – a low figure compared to the district attorney’s office in recent years.
Earlier this week Bragg sued Jordan on Tuesday in a remarkable move intended to keep him from interfering in the Trump indictment.
The suit accused Jordan of a ‘brazen and unconstitutional attack’ on the prosecution of Trump after the committee subpoenaed Bragg’s former employee, demanded documents and planned a field hearing in New York City to disparage his office.
The 50-page suit said Jordan was launching a ‘transparent campaign to intimidate and attack’ Bragg after he unveiled 34 felony charges against Trump last week over hush money payments.
Lawyers for Bragg seek to prevent Jordan’s subpoena of Mark Pomerantz, who formerly led the office’s investigation into Trump before resigning once Bragg rejected his legal theories, according to the New York Times. He later wrote a book about the need to prosecute Trump.
Bragg, who campaigned on criminal justice reform, issued a controversial ‘Day One’ memo after taking office stating he would only seek prison time in the most severe cases.
In February 2022, Bragg walked back a little on his policies, sending out a memo that made it clear to all his staff that any crime involving a firearm would be prosecuted as a felony — reversing the stance he had taken just a month before.
Bragg’s office also took heat when he tried to prosecute 61-year-old bodega worker Jose Alba for fatally stabbing a man who attacked him over a bag of chips. Bragg later dropped the charges against Alba.
Crime in New York City ticked up in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic (before Bragg took office) after a decade-long mostly downward trend. Major crime soared about 22 percent in 2022 – with Bragg taking office on the first day of that year.
New York recorded 438 homicides in 2022 — up from 319 in pre-pandemic 2019. Robberies were up 43 percent in 2022 compared to 2019 and felony assaults, 32 percent.
From April 2022 to April 2023, major crime remains about the same, though murders, shootings and burglaries have dropped.
The city was far safer even in 2022 than it was during a dangerous period in the 80s and 90s — murders and robberies were down 80 percent in 2022 compared to 1990, rapes down 50 percent.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
