The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, on Monday, held a field hearing in Lower Manhattan to embarrass Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as being “pro-crime and anti-victim,” but it was a key witness that made headlines.
Madeline Brame, who lost her son to a stabbing in 2018, blames Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for “softening” the perpetrators.
Brame’s son Hason Correa, a 35-year-old father of three and army veteran, was attacked by a group of people he did not know and stabbed to death during an altercation outside an apartment building.
Two of Correa’s assailants have entered plea deals with Manhattan prosecutors and one has already been released on time – Mary Saunders pleaded guilty to a fully fabricated charge of assault with a shoe and was sentenced to a year in prison.
The mother of a murder victim gave fiery testimony and sometimes attacked Democrats at a Manhattan crime hearing Monday morning
Madeline Brame, who lost her son to a stabbing in 2018 and blames Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for being “soft” on the perpetrators
Travis Stewart pleaded guilty to attempted gang assault and was sentenced to seven years due to a past criminal record.
The man who stabbed Correa was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Representative Dan Goldman (DN.Y.), whose district includes the Javitz Federal Building, told Brame, “Your experiences are devastating, but the problem is that this is a charade to cover up abuses of power that they’re doing the rounds.” ceaselessly outside this hearing on Donald Trump. The purpose of this hearing is to cover up what they know as an improper investigation.”
“May I answer you please?” Bram asked.
‘Not now; I only have 20 seconds. I’m sorry,” Goldman said.
“Don’t insult my intelligence!” then shouted Brame.
“You’re trying to insult me like I don’t know what’s going on. I am fully aware of what is going on here! That’s why I ran away from the Democratic Party plantation!”
Brame, who also chairs the Victims’ Rights Council, also said she “doesn’t hear anyone talk about politics or Trump except the other side,” referring to the Democrats.
“Victims don’t care about anyone’s political ideology or party. Neither do criminals. They don’t roll up to someone and ask him if he’s a Democrat or a Republican before they punch him in the head, or before they push him in front of the train, or before they stab him to death,” Brame explained.
But Goldman told Republican anti-crime witnesses, “We don’t have jurisdiction to do anything about what you’re concerned about.”
Rep. Dan Goldman told Republican anti-crime witnesses, “We don’t have jurisdiction to do anything about what you’re concerned about.”
Goldman points to anti-Semitic poster outside hearing attacking billionaire George Soros, who donated heavily to Alvin Bragg’s DA campaign
Speaking to DailyMail.com after the hearing, Brame explained why she was so upset.
“You know they all made comments about us being used, about us being props, about being a political stunt… and you know he was one of the last, by the time we got to him I was just done with it. So that’s why my reaction was the same.’
The mother of five has opposed Democratic claims that they have no jurisdiction over urban crime.
‘Yes they do. It could be a dollar — a federal dollar — that Alvin Bragg’s office gets. They have a right to investigate and find out what that money is being spent on.’
The Manhattan DA’s Office receives approximately $630,000 annually from federal funding and also has access to another $200,000 to be used by 2024, through various grants used to help local law enforcement officers fight crime.
“When you take a life, you take a life,” Brame said, arguing that even the stabbing hadn’t been appropriately condemned. “There should be no murder plea deals.”
“They treated us like garbage,” Brame said of Bragg’s office, adding that the office had not informed her it would be offering plea deals to the people involved in the murder.
Democratic witnesses and committee members noted that New York’s crime rate was lower than other cities — some cited a recent study that found New York City to be the fifth safest major city in America.
To that end, Brame said, “We don’t care… about your stats. You can’t convince us not to believe our lying eyes with your numbers, because we see it day in and day out with our own eyes.’
Hason Correa, a US Army veteran, was fatally stabbed in Harlem in 2018 and two of his assailants received a plea deal with a light conviction 10993537
But chairman Jim Jordan zoomed in on Bragg’s “Day One” memo, saying he wouldn’t prosecute some lesser crimes that didn’t affect public safety.
Those include “marijuana, fare evasion, some offenses, driving with 1 or 2 license suspensions, non-criminal offenses such as traffic violations, resisting arrest for non-criminal offences, prostitution and obstruction of government administration.”
On robberies, the memo told assistant district attorneys “to use common sense to distinguish between two very different types of cases: a person who holds a knife to someone’s neck, and someone who, usually struggling with substance use or mental problems, shoplifting and threatens at least one store employee when leaving.’
Crime in New York City increased in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic (before Bragg took office) after a mostly decade-long downward trend. Serious crime rose about 22 percent by 2022 — with Bragg taking office on the first day of that year.
New York recorded 438 homicides in 2022 – up from 319 in pre-pandemic 2019.
From April 2022 to April 2023, major crime remains about the same, although homicides, shootings, and burglaries have fallen.
The city was much safer even in 2022 than during a dangerous period in the 1980s and 1990s — murders and robberies were down 80 percent from 1990 by 2022, and rapes were down 50 percent.
From the start of 2022 when he took office through November of this year, Bragg downgraded 52 percent of misdemeanor crimes. When he took a case, his office only won a conviction in 51 percent of cases — a low figure compared to the district attorney’s office in recent years.