new york – Republicans outraged by the prosecution of Donald Trump are escalating a war with the prosecutors who indicted him, and by falsely portraying New York City as a crime-infested place, they are criticizing his hometown. I’m trying to embarrass him.

The House Judiciary Committee, led by Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, is holding an open-air hearing Monday near the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

The committee’s Republican majority says it will look at Democrats’ “promoting crime and anti-victim” policies. One of his members on the committee, Rep. Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona, said Mr. Bragg had “turned New York City into a wasteland” and that “the lawlessness had completely spun out of control.” Tweeted.

Democrats say the hearing was a partisan stunt aimed at fueling conservative anger at Bragg, Manhattan’s first black district attorney.

New York City officials have asked Jordan to cancel the hearing. C-SPAN refused to air it on television.

Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat and former police chief, told CNN on Friday, “This is just a donation in kind or a donation to the Trump campaign.” “This is really a hoax and it’s a shame. In times like these, they use taxpayer dollars to host this hoax.”

Monday’s hearing is the latest salvo in Jordan’s weeks-long effort to use congressional powers to protect Trump from what he says are politically motivated prosecutions.

Jordan has sent Bragg a letter requesting testimony and documents, alleging that his office is under federal scrutiny and therefore subject to congressional scrutiny. It submitted a subpoena to former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, who was overseeing the investigation.

Bragg sued Jordan last week in an attempt to block the subpoena, calling it a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” and a “transparent campaign to intimidate” Jordan over Trump’s case. A federal judge has scheduled an initial hearing for Wednesday.

A House hearing is set for Monday, fueling an argument that Bragg is fueling street crime because he is too focused on Trump.

Criminal attacks on New York City and its largely Democratic leaders is an age-old trick for politicians representing rural and suburban neighborhoods. That’s still a punch that could land some audiences, but in reality, the city’s violent crime rate is well below the U.S. average.

In 2022, Bragg’s first year in office, there were 78 murders in Manhattan, a borough of 1.6 million people. This was a 15% decrease from the previous year. By comparison, Palm Beach County, Florida, where Trump is one of about 1.5 million residents, had 96 killings.

Dr. Jeffrey Butts, Director of the Center for Research and Evaluation at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said: “It’s not true. It’s just a story people tell.”

“If you live in a small, predominantly white county in Iowa, when you think of New York, you think of the scariest movies and TV shows you’ve ever seen,” Butts said. “I think Congress is aiming for that.”

For Bragg, scrutiny from Republicans, and some Democrats, is nothing new.

A Harvard-educated former federal prosecutor, chief deputy state attorney general and civil rights attorney, Mr. Bragg won eight Democratic primaries and won 83% of the general election vote. Victory.

Shortly after taking office, Bragg produced an internal memo stating, among other things, that his office would not prosecute certain low-level misdemeanors.

It sparked early clashes with New York Police Department leaders and attracted the attention of Republicans out of town, and Bragg soon became a symbol of Democratic tolerance.

Republican Lee Zeldin, then representing East Long Island in Congress, made Bragg the focus of his gubernatorial campaign and repeatedly promised to remove the independently elected prosecutor from office.

Although Zeldin lost, his rhetoric on crime resonated in the suburbs and helped Republicans defeat Democrats in many of New York’s leading seats.

In fact, New York has not been immune to the nationwide crime surge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most categories of crime in the city are still above 2019 levels. Several types of crime, including robberies, car thefts, and assaults, rose in Manhattan in Bragg’s first year in office, but are down again this year.

Despite its focus on Mr. Bragg, the House Judiciary Committee has not asked him to testify and does not expect anyone in his office to participate. We will hear from six witnesses.

Among them was Jose Alba, a former convenience store clerk, who was arrested after stabbing an attacker to death in his store. Bragg’s office dropped the charges, but critics say he should have dropped them sooner. Madeline Blame, who accused Bragg of seeking long prison sentences for only two of the four people involved in his son’s murder. And Jennifer Harrison is a victim advocate whose boyfriend was murdered in New Jersey in 2005 — outside Bragg’s jurisdiction and long before he took office.

The Bragg campaign sent an email to supporters on Friday, mocking the hearings as a “politically motivated hoax.” justice. “

On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DNY.

Since taking power in the House, Republicans have launched an in-depth surveillance agenda, delving extensively into President Joe Biden’s administration, his family, and the workings of the federal government.

Enforcing oversight is an important function of Congress, but the Republican House’s sweeping investigations have often been more provocative than content. A committee led by Jordan and others took a long time to come up with sympathetic findings about the allegations, sometimes branching into conspiracy theories.

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Associate Press reporters David B. Caruso of New York and Lisa Mascaro of Washington contributed to this report.

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