Chaos erupted at the Manhattan Judiciary Committee crime hearing with protesters demanding to be let in and Chairman Jim Jordan having to tell the witness section to be quiet multiple times due to outbursts of applause during testimony.
Pro- and anti-Jordanian protesters clashed with police to keep them out of the hearing room as the presiding judge denounced Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s crime policy.
“In this country, justice is supposed to be blind, regardless of race, religion or creed. However, here in Manhattan, the scales of justice are weighed down by politics,” Jordan, R-Ohio, said in his opening statement.
Ranking member Jerry Nadler, himself a New Yorker, said in his opening statement that the hearing was just a way for Republicans to carry water for former President Trump.
Pro- and anti-Jordanian protesters clashed with police to keep them out of the hearing room as Manhattan Chairman DA Alvin Bragg slammed crime policies
Demonstrators demand to be allowed into the hearing room
Bragg arrives at his office with heavy security as Jordan holds a hearing on his policies
“Let me be very clear, we are here for one reason and for one reason only the chairman is carrying out Donald Trump’s orders,” the Democrat said.
He called Jordan’s political plays since Bragg’s indictment of Trump an “outrageous abuse of power” used to “perpetuate anti-Semitic and racist tropes” lobbied against Bragg by Trump and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who also investigating Trump’s finances.
“It is—to use the presidents’ favorite term—arming the federal government.”
Before the hearing, Right-wing Democrats, joined by Mayor Eric Adams, held a press conference to push back the narrative that New York City is unsafe.
“Welcome to the safest major city in America,” the mayor said.
“We need to focus on how we deal with the gun violence that is choking America and let the prosecutor do his job, and that’s the job he does.”
But Democratic City Councilman Robert Holden spoke out against Bragg’s policies.
Holden said he would live through New York’s high-crime era in the 1980s, but “I’ve never seen such lawlessness in my life.”
“All pharmacies are under lock and key,” Holden said. “It’s so bad — these petty crimes that Mr. Bragg has said he won’t prosecute. I am not loyal to the party, but to my constituents.’
Madeline Brame, chair of the Victims Rights Reform Council and a mother of a murder victim herself, told the committee that under Bragg “criminal elements of all kinds are free to do what they want when they want, how they want, who they want, without consequence.” , without deterrence.’
She said federal funding should be taken from the DA’s Manhattan office.
‘They don’t do anything at all. And I suggest that another dime of our federal tax money be pumped into these organizations until they can produce measurable results of the effectiveness of what they are doing with our tax to protect the public.”
Brame’s son, army veteran Hason Correa, was fatally stabbed in Harlem in 2018.
Correa, a 35-year-old married father of three, was allegedly beaten and stabbed to death by a group of assailants 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.
“In this country, justice is supposed to be blind, regardless of race, religion or creed. However, here in Manhattan, the scales of justice are weighed down by politics,” Jordan, R-Ohio, said in his opening statement
‘Jim Jordan does a lot of political theater in Washington. He should know better than to take his tired act to Broadway,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler
The man who stabbed Correa was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
“When you take a life, you take a life,” Brame said, arguing that even the stabbing hadn’t received the proper punishment. “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.
Jose Alba also testified about the “terrible experience” he had when Bragg originally charged him with murder when he stabbed a man who attacked him at the bodega where he worked.
“I’m not here because I support the Republicans. I’m not here to criticize the Democrats. I just want to tell the public about the horrible experience I had to go through because of the crime in this city,” he said.
“While the charges were eventually dropped, they shouldn’t have been brought against me in the first place,” Alba said through his attorney. “I am now traumatized by the incident. I don’t work because I fear for my life.’
Democrats brought in witnesses to point out that many crimes happen at a slower rate in New York City than elsewhere in the country.
Jim Kessler, vice president of Progressive Think Thank Third Way, when questioned by Nadler, noted that New York’s homicide rate is 18 percent lower than the national average.
“What we found when we looked at data between 2000 and 2020 is the murder rate in red states as defined by the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump in 2020… the murder rate in red states was higher than the murder rate in blue states , and all 21 of those years.”
Crime in New York City increased in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic (before Bragg took office) following a decade-long, largely 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.
The Judiciary Committee, along with Oversight and Administration, have launched an all-out political war against Bragg over the indictment, most recently with a subpoena for Prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, who formerly worked in Bragg’s office and wrote a book about the need to prosecute Trump.
Madeline Brame, above, will testify Monday at the NYC Judiciary Committee hearing. Her son was fatally stabbed in 2018
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
Alba shows DailyMail.com the wounds he received in the attack
On Tuesday, Bragg sued Jordan in an extraordinary effort to prevent him from interfering in Trump’s criminal case.
The lawsuit charged Jordan with a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on Trump’s prosecution after the commission subpoenaed Bragg’s former employee, demanded documents and scheduled a field hearing in New York.
Lawyers for Bragg try to avoid Jordan’s subpoena from Pomerantz.
Pomerantz tried to convince the district attorney to prosecute Trump, but stopped when Bragg rejected his legal theories.
Bragg has refused to comply with document requests from chairmen of the three committees regarding Bragg’s communications with the Justice Department. Bragg has described the Republicans’ interference as improper interference in a criminal case.
The charges against Trump were revealed last week and include 34 counts of falsifying company records in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels and “catch and kill” payments through the National Enquirer to Playboy model Karen McDougal and a doorman who claimed a story about Trump’s alleged love child with a housekeeper.