(The Center Square) – A conservative legal group is seeking a Federal Elections Commission investigation into Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. and the Biden campaign, alleging election interference.
Bragg landed a political victory along with his legal win late last month when a New York City jury convicted former President Donald Trump on 34 criminal counts. Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee to face President Joe Biden in November, maintained throughout the case that the prosecution was a political witch hunt orchestrated by Biden’s Justice Department to hurt his re-election chances.
On Wednesday, America First Legal filed a complaint with the FEC alleging violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act.
“Questions from the media and Congress, coupled with the demonstrable evidence of influence from the DOJ, the Manhattan DA’s office, and Bragg’s financial supporters who later influenced the Biden Administration, creates a substantially likely risk of coordination between President [Joe] Biden and Bragg,” AFL Vice President Dan Epstein said in a statement. “With the lawfare before the FEC against candidate and former President Donald Trump, it is important that the FEC take a hard look at the relationship between President Biden, his administration, and his political committees and the New York County DA’s Office’s political prosecution of the former President during a campaign year.”
When he ran for office in 2021, Bragg pitched himself to Manhattan voters – who supported Biden by a 70-point margin in 2020 – as the best suited of the district attorney candidates he was running against to prosecute Trump.
While on the campaign trail, Bragg called the investigation of Trump the “most important, most high-profile case” against what he said was the former president’s “lawlessness.”
After being elected, Bragg hired the third-highest ranking member in Biden’s Justice Department to help him investigate Trump, the complaint notes.
Matthew “Colangelo previously held senior positions in the U.S. Department of Justice and the New York Attorney General’s Office, both of which had competing investigations related to President Trump,” America First Legal said in a news release announcing the complaint. “Notably, before joining the Biden DOJ, Colangelo contributed several times to Bragg’s District Attorney campaign.”
Bragg charged Trump last year with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Bragg alleged Trump broke New York law by falsifying business records with the intent to commit or conceal another crime.
On May 30, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump on all 34 counts.
“The overall record in these matters,” America First Legal said, which includes Colangelo’s hiring, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s “refusal to disclose communications between his Department and Bragg’s office, and the Biden campaign’s press event and statement immediately after the trial and conviction – indicates that Bragg’s hush money prosecution was made to harm President Trump’s 2024 candidacy and would not have been made absent President Trump’s status as a presidential candidate.”