House Judiciary Committee to hold NYC hearing with ‘victims’ of DA Alvin Bragg’s policies

WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee will hear from “victims” of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s policies during a hearing in New York next month — escalating a confrontation with the progressive prosecutor over his unprecedented criminal case against former President Donald Trump, The Post has learned.

The “field hearing” will be held at 9 a.m. on Monday, April 17 at the Jacob Javits Federal Building just blocks from Bragg’s Lower Manhattan office and the courthouse where Trump, 76, was arraigned on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records last week.

A source told The Post that the hearing will examine “New York’s rampant crime and victims of Alvin Bragg.”

Republicans have slammed Bragg as being soft on conventional crime while embracing a novel legal theory to bring the first-ever criminal case against an ex-president.

It’s unclear if committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will invite Bragg, but a source told The Post the move hasn’t been ruled out.

The source said that “victims” of Bragg’s “failure to prosecute” are expected to be witnesses, though they were not immediately able to share the expected witness list.

Before pursuing the indictment against Trump, Bragg, an elected Democrat, downgraded the severity of charges against many offenders.

From Jan. 1, 2022, when he took office, through late November, Bragg downgraded 52% of felony cases to misdemeanors, The Post has reported.

When felony charges were brought, his office won a conviction just 51% of the time. Both percentages were lower than in comparable recent years.

Bragg also took heat last year for charging bodega clerk Jose Alba, then 61, with second-degree murder after the worker fatally stabbed an ex-con who attacked him inside the store.

Bragg’s office dropped the case in July, but only after a national outcry.

Bragg has refused to comply with document requests from three House committees relating to the “politically motivated” Trump case, including regarding interactions with the Justice Department — with the DA describing the request as improper meddling in a criminal matter and one of his aides even hanging up on a Judiciary Committee staffer after telling them to “stop calling us with this bulls–t.”

Last week, Jordan subpoenaed attorney Mark Pomerantz, who wrote a book calling for Trump’s prosecution after resigning from Bragg’s office in protest of an earlier decision by the district attorney not to move forward with a different financial-crimes prosecution.

The DA charged Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, for allegedly not accurately describing on internal company records “hush money” payments made in the lead up to the 2016 election.

The charge ordinarily would be a misdemeanor in New York — but it can be upgraded to a felony if there is intent to conceal or commit another crime.

In this case, apparently campaign-finance violations, though Bragg has been coy about what exactly the alleged underlying crime was.

Federal candidates are allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on their own campaigns, but then-Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who was reimbursed by Trump, would have exceeded the contribution limit if he used his own money to pay $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels and $150,000 to Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, whose story was purchased by the National Enquirer in a “catch and kill” scheme.

The DOJ previously chose not to prosecute Trump at the time of Cohen’s guilty plea to charges including campaign finance violations and tax evasion in August 2018.