NEW YORK — On Monday morning, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on crime at an imposing federal building in Lower Manhattan. Although so-called field hearings held outside of Washington, D.C., are a , Monday’s proceedings were a remarkable, sometimes rancorous, display of discord.
What was the stated point of Monday’s hearing?
The title of Monday’s hearing, “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan,” was intended as a referendum on the policies of Alvin Bragg, who recently indicted former President Donald Trump for falsifying business records.
Republicans said that because Bragg’s office receives some federal funding, Congress has oversight over his policies. “We certainly have a right, in Congress, to overview a lot of different subjects,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., told reporters after the hearing.
Critics of Bragg have said that his focus on reforms like decarceration and restorative justice is misguided, especially at a time when New York is trying to recover from the pandemic upsurge in street crime. But it is his focus on Trump that has made him the focus of Republican ire,
Democrats govern most major American cities, but it is not clear that Republicans are more effective at making cities safe. Jacksonville, the largest city in the United States with a Republican mayor, .
so far this year, but the profusion of homeless people on streets and in subways and other visible signs of disorder have left many New Yorkers and visitors uneasy. Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., said that she loved New York but that she was dismayed by the streetscape she saw during her taxi ride from the airport into the city.
“We’re heading for anarchy and lawlessness,” she argued, though it is not clear that she witnesses crimes taking place or merely the results of chronic institutional neglect, including racist housing policies and shortfalls in public education.
Sometimes, Republicans took issue with progressive policies like Raise the Age—a—implemented by state lawmakers in Albany which are beyond Bragg’s control. The easy availability of guns and drugs pose challenges to conservatives and progressives alike.
“”We live in a violent country like no other advanced nation,” said Jim Kessler, an executive at centrist think tank Third Way who tried to temper Republicans’ hyperbolic assertions with statistical context about both crime rates and gun trafficking.
“The fact is that New York City is not only safer than most large cities in America. It is safer than most cities of any size and, on a per capita basis, NYC is safer than most of the states of the Members sitting on the dais on the majority side,” Kessler said, referencing the committee’s Republican members.
, a former police officer, has advocated for a law-and-order response to the crime surge of the previous two years, frequently proposing policies — involuntary confinement of mentally ill homeless people, for example — that dismay civil libertarians and social justice activists.
Still, it is useful for Republicans to portray big cities as cauldrons of despair that need to be rescued from Democratic control. “Soft-on-crime policies are going to ruin this great city,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the combative chair of the Judiciary Committee, and a close ally of Trump. “That’s why we are here.”
What was the subtext?
“I do think that there’s a reason why we’re in this jurisdiction,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Ca., noting that the Ohio district Jordan represents has higher crime rates than does New York. “I think it’s pretty obvious that we’re in New York because of the case New York vs. Donald J. Trump.”
Last month, Bragg , which was intended to keep her quiet about a romantic affair she had had with Trump years before. Nearly all Republicans decried the prosecution as being motivated by political animus.
As one of Trump’s most aggressive defenders in Washington, Jordan demanded that Bragg’s office cooperate with a House investigation of the Daniels case. Bragg then sued Jordan, between the former Ohio State wrestling coach and the star Harvard graduate from Harlem.
Democrats who attended Monday’s session insisted that there was no reason to conduct a hearing in New York, given that Republican-led states tend to and other violent crimes than do Democratic ones.
And they criticized their GOP colleagues for not doing more to stop gun violence. “If my colleagues across the aisle were really concerned and really cared about reducing violent crime, they’d work with Democrats to pass common-sense gun laws,” said Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga.
President Biden signed some modest gun control measures into law last year, after shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, N.Y., . But as Johnson noted, more sweeping measures, like universal background checks and an assault weapons ban, remain a legislative impossibility, at least at the present.
Arguments about gun control drew an angry response from Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind. “I just don’t see how I and my kids are going to be safer if I lock up my guns.” she said. “Is there anything else you can say [other] than gun control?”
What is ‘the Day One’ memo?
Republicans frequently referenced a memorandum Bragg issued on Jan 3, 2022, just two days after taking office. In , Bragg wrote that he wanted to use incarceration only as “last resort.”
The memo called for shorter sentences, less use of pretrial detention and more focus on reentry programs. But after criticism that the new policies would make the city less safe,
Still, his critics believe the policies outlined in the withdrawn memorandum are a genuine expression of his police goals. On Monday, Jordan said the notice “sent a message to the bad guys in this town” that they could act with impunity.
Who were the witnesses?
The most prolific witness was bodega worker Jose Alba, who in 2020 had stabbed an assailant in self-defense during a dispute over payment. Bragg charged him with murder, , Alba had to spend several harrowing days in detention at Rikers Island, the city’s notorious jail.
“My story is one that should not happen again,” Alba said through a translator. After his statement was read, there was clapping from the audience, in a break from the usual congressional decorum.
Madeline Brame delivered emotional testimony about the fatal stabbing of her son Army Sgt. Hason Correa in Harlem. The killing took place in 2018, well before Bragg took office, but she strongly criticized him with offering lenient sentences to two of the suspects.
“He was handed a strong murder case.” . “As soon as he took office, the case began to unravel.” She forcefully disputed a suggestion from Lofgren that she and the other witnesses were being “used” by House Republicans to attack Bragg and thus weaken the case against Trump.
Barry Borgen similarly laid into Bragg for a lack of stronger sentences for the suspects in an antisemitic attack against his son Joey. One of those suspects, Waseem Awawdeh, “do it again,” after his arrest .
Speaking, as other victims’ relatives did, with unsparing emotion, Borgen criticized the committee’s ranking Democratic member, Rep. Jerry Nadler of Manhattan, for not doing more to hold Bragg accountable.
“You’re a Jewish New Yorker. You have Jewish roots here. Behavior like this enables DA Bragg to do whatever he wants to do,” Borgen said.
What about Trump?
Trump hovered over the proceedings, even as Republicans insisted he had nothing to do with the subject or setting of the hearing. “We absolutely didn’t do this for an exercise. We absolutely didn’t do this for politics,” Van Drew of New Jersey said. “I don’t give a damn about his issues right now.”
Democrats countered with statistics, pointing out that if the purpose were truly to hold a hearing at a site representative of the nation’s crime problem, it would be held in one of the cities with the highest crime rates. Several speakers noted that Jordan’s home state of Ohio and its largest cities — Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron, and Toledo — than New York City.
“Let the D.A. do his job,” Adams, the mayor, said at a press conference before the hearing began.
After the hearing concluded, a small but boisterous group of Trump supporters crowded into a hallway, bearing signs and flags proclaiming their affinity for a former president who is increasingly seen as a frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, despite his bevy of legal troubles.
“Long live Trump,” they shouted.
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