Who is Alvin Bragg? The Manhattan district attorney who could bring down Trump

Former president Donald Trump fired out three furious all-caps posts on his Truth Social page on 18 March 2023, invoking images of burning cities and World War III while stoking unrest with a call for his supporters to “protest, protest, protest” what he predicted would be his arrest in New York.

Alvin Bragg – the Manhattan district attorney whose office is overseeing a criminal investigation into the former president’s business practices following long-running allegations of fraud – issued a memo to his staff in response, stressing that he does “not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York”.

His internal message did not mention the former president by name or his incendiary rhetoric, but he referred to “public comments surrounding an ongoing investigation by this office.”

“As with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate,” he said.

On 30 March 2023, a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Mr Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, making him the first former president ever to face criminal charges. Prosecutors accuse him of attempting to cover up an illegal scheme to suppress negative stories about him in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Like all defendants facing criminal charges, Mr Trump was processed before appearing in court on Tuesday 4 April 2023, with his fingerprints taken. However, he was not placed in handcuffs and no mugshot was taken.

At his arraignment that day, Mr Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges before flying back to his Florida home at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach in time to deliver a prime-time address that night.

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