Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is facing two lawsuits for allegedly failing to comply with state Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests about his office’s possible communication with the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers regarding his prosecution of former President Donald Trump.
Earlier this year, Bragg indicted Trump on 34 felony counts related to falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments made during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., is accusing Bragg of potentially coordinating with Biden’s Justice Department and other Democratic elites about Trump’s prosecution. Heritage’s lawsuit alleges, “Regrettably, these questions have not been met with answers. These reports have raised concerns in many circles based in large part upon the longstanding history of President Trump’s political opponents coordinating their activities to systematically weaponize the criminal justice system against him and thereby pervert the course of Justice.”
A second lawsuit by Heritage accuses Bragg and his team of accepting pro bono help from major law firms specializing in white-collar litigation. It requests that the court declare the sought-after documents as “subject to release under the New York Freedom of Information Law,” and bar Bragg’s team from “seeking costs and fees for the request at issue in this case.”
Heritage claims Bragg and his team have largely ignored their requests for communication between the suspected parties, which they assert are legally accessible under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. Mike Howell, director of Heritage’s Oversight Project, stated, “The fact we have to file a lawsuit against Bragg who says he can’t produce these records and says he doesn’t have the systems to do so, is proof-positive of another dual standard of justice at play in this country.”
Howell also referred to Bragg as a “weaponized actor” pursuing the former president on “a loony theory” about document retention, while simultaneously failing to manage his own documents and violating the same information laws he’s bound by. He further criticized Bragg, labeling him a “hypocrite” and condemning the waste of New York taxpayer dollars in defending against these lawsuits.
