NEW YORK — House Republicans from other parts of the U.S. held a “field hearing” in New York City on Monday to hear testimony from a handful of local crime victims critical of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — an at times chaotic affair that Democrats argued was meant to provide political cover for former President Donald Trump.
The hearing, convened by the House Judiciary Committee’s GOP members at the Javits Federal Building in Manhattan, turned tumultuous off the bat as a group of anti-Trump activists tried to storm into the room right as testimony was about to get underway.
“This hearing is a sham!” the protesters chanted as law enforcement officers escorted them out.
Inside the hearing room, meanwhile, Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee’s chairman, set the partisan tone of the event by saying in opening remarks that “the scales of justice are weighed down by politics” in Manhattan.
“Rather than enforcing the law, the DA is using his office to do the bidding of left-wing campaign fundraisers,” Jordan said of Bragg.
The hearing comes on the heels of Bragg indicting Trump on 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records related to hush payments he issued in 2016 to a porn star who says she had sex with him a decade earlier while he was married.
Trump and his right-wing allies in Congress have ripped Bragg’s historic indictment as baseless, and the witnesses invited to testify at Monday’s hearing, Jordan said, would demonstrate the DA is more focused on going after the ex-president than protecting Manhattan residents.
Madeline Brame, the mother of Hason Correa, a U.S. Army veteran who was killed in a gang-related 2018 incident in Harlem, said Jordan’s argument is right on the ball.
Brame claimed Bragg let most of her son’s alleged killers off the hook after taking office last year by dropping the stiffest charges against two of the defendants.
“DA Bragg has demonstrated over and over again that he has no regard or concern for human life or victims of crime,” Brame testified.
Other witnesses at the hearing included Jose Alba, a Manhattan bodega worker who was charged by Bragg’s office with murder for allegedly fatally stabbing a man who tried to rob his Hamilton Heights deli last year. The charges ended up being dropped against Alba after his attorneys successfully argued he acted in self-defense.
“I spent almost a week in Rikers Island before bail was lowered and I could be released. I was forced to endure the harsh conditions on Rikers Island as an innocent man. I still don’t know why I was charged with murder,” testified Alba, who is suing the city for the since-rescinded indictment against him.
None of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee represent New York, and many of the panel’s Democrats argued the GOP is using the crime victims to advance a political agenda.
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, an ardent Trump supporter, pushed back against that criticism and claimed the committee held the hearing because “our criminal justice system is insane.”
“We are here, not to use anyone, but to uplift,” he said.
Turning to Brame, New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said she didn’t offer a complete account of the prosecution of her son’s murderers by failing to mention that two of them have since been sentenced to life in prison.
On a broader level, the Democrats on the committee questioned the need for the hearing itself.
They invited Jim Kessler, co-founder of the policy think tank Third Way, to share crime statistics for other U.S. jurisdictions that showed New York actually ranks as one of the safest large cities in the country.
“What is the mechanism for transferring this hearing to Ohio?” Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, said after Kessler testified that Jordan’s home state has worse murder and shooting rates than New York City.
Jordan replied that there is no committee mechanism to make that move.
