The congressional anti-Alvin Bragg brigade released a bleak and dramatic video on Monday morning presenting New York as crime infested as Republican lawmakers launched into a lower Manhattan hearing intended to tar the district attorney.
The video, published on Twitter about an hour before the so-called field hearing began, shows a darkened sky over the Manhattan skyline followed by images of violence, police tape and crime-related news clippings, interspersed with shots of Bragg during his swearing-in.
The spot ends with white text blaring “#DemocratCrimeCrisis.”
Democrats have charged that the hearing, conducted by the House Judiciary Committee, is a political stunt intended to bully Bragg after the Manhattan district attorney brought criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.
The hearing, held around the corner from Bragg’s office, was off to a chaotic start inside the Jacob Javits Federal Building on Monday morning. A raucous crew of anti-Trump protesters shouted “This hearing is a sham” in a hallway outside the hearing room.
Inside the hearing room, the Trump-allied Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, said the event was “about the administration of justice and keeping communities safe.”
Jordan asserted that New York City has “lost its way when it comes to fighting crime and upholding the law,” and claimed Bragg seeks to implement a “radical political agenda” rather than “enforcing the law.
Crime rates rose in New York City last year, Bragg’s first year in office, according to the NYPD. But crime has flatlined in Manhattan and citywide this year, according to police data, and some violent crime rates are falling sharply.
Bragg, who was elected in 2021, faced criticism early in his tenure over a staff memo in which he encouraged dialing back prosecution of minor crimes, but he later revised some of his policies. Some on the left have accused him of abandoning the progressive policies he campaigned on.
In Jordan’s home state of Ohio, the murder rate is far higher than in New York City or Manhattan, according to Centers for Disease Control data.
Mayor Adams said he had an eight-word message for House Republicans descending on New York City for the hearing on Monday: “Welcome to the safest big city in America.”
“It is really troubling that American taxpayers’ dollars are being used to come here on this junket to do an examination of the safest big city in America instead of focusing on the real proliferation of guns that we have witnessed,” Adams said.
“It is the Republican Party that is stopping sensible gun laws,” Adams added. “We need to focus on: ‘How do we deal with the gun violence that is suffocating America?’ And let the DA do his job.”
Rep. Jerrold Nadler of Manhattan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Jordan is “acting as an extension of the Trump defense team” in an “outrageous abuse of power.”
The committee chair, Nadler argued, is “trying to intimidate and deter the duly elected district attorney of Manhattan from doing the work he constituents elected him to do.”
“Jim Jordan engages in a lot of political theater in Washington,” Nadler said. “But he should know better than to take his tired act to Broadway.”