Attorney Decries ‘Progressive Prosecutor’ Alvin Bragg Over ‘Political Prosecution’ Of Donald Trump

mic on and pull close thank you you bet uh good morning chairman Jordan ranking member plaset members of the committee uh I thank you for the opportunity to testify here today my name is Jonathan fahe and I'm an attorney with the law firm of Holzman vogle I'm in private practice now but I spent most of my 25 years as an attorney as a prosecutor both as a state and federal prosecutor the reason I went to law school was because I wanted to be a prosecutor didn't want to be a law firm lawyer or anything else I wanted to be a prosecutor and the reason for that is my mom uh when I was growing up my mom was an assistant commis attorney in Arlington County Virginia and then she was eventually uh elected to be the C attorney as a democrat in Arlington and later appointed by President Clinton to be the United States Attorney for the eastern district of Virginia and I learned from my mom what I would go to court I would sometimes watch trials and things like that but I learned from her about the importance of being a prosecutor in terms of what it means to the public in terms of Public Safety but I also learned what it meant to administer Justice to be fair when you're entrusted with so much power how you administer that reflects not only on the person that that is the subject of that but as the whole Community how we treat the accused how we treat the most vulnerable victims and you know I learned from her that being a prosecutor really wasn't a partisan job it was a public safety job it was was speaking for victims job and that's the way it had really been in Virginia where I live and most of the country uh up until about 10 years ago and you know I say that because you could go through the country and you could see prosecutors that are Democrats prosecutors that are Republicans but they really approached the job the same way until recently but I began my career after law school after clerking in state court I became a state prosecutor in Fairfax County uh there I served under Bob ran who was a elected Democrat and he had been the C attorney for probably 30 years or so at that point and I had the opportunity to prosecute cases anywhere from the lowest level misdemeanor cases to the most violent felons and again I learned a lot of lessons there but the most important lesson I learned was you're entrusted with so much power from the the position from the community and how you administer that power is what's most important you you don't prosecute people because you don't like them you have some other ulterior motive you prosecute them because um they violated the law and you're treating people equally equally regardless of the political motivations or political parties or anything else they might have um I went over from the Cel attorney's office to the US attorney's office in the eastern district of Virginia where I served for 17 years I served under multiple administrations but from uh George W bush to Obama to president Trump and also what I learned there no matter who was within that office people were professional I I had a chance to work with the most talented probably attorneys I've ever worked with and one thing that that during that tenure people's political whatever their political leanings were you rarely knew other than maybe outside of work and while I was there I had the opportunity to to prosecute drug traffickers gang members frauders other types of crimes I also had the opportunity to prosecute um to train younger prosecutors on how to prosecute cases ethics things of that nature uh the reason I go into my background and I know the time is short is the reason I'm here today I would say is because of the progressive prosecutor movement you know funded by these outside groups um this started about 10 years ago these Progressive prosecutors being elected through funding from Outsiders groups as uh mostly in Democrat jurisdictions they defeated incumbent Democrats and the movement basically is sort of the underlining premise was the entire system was unjust therefore the prosecutor can do whatever they want and you see saw that in Philadelphia you see it in Chicago which incidentally I think had a 100 plus people shot over the weekend you see in La other places and essentially what these prosecutors have done is to to Institute what they would call Criminal Justice Reform they would go into office and they would nullify any laws they did not like and that seems somewhat benign in some respects but the problem with it as you see with Alvin brag which I'll get into briefly at the end of my five minutes here but Alvin brag has taken this he was a progressive prosecutor in New York he ran on this Progressive prosecutor uh I guess as a progressive prosecutor and when he got into office his main theme was deciding not to prosecute cases basically not in Prosecuting any Mr meters whatsoever reducing misdem meters to felonies and reducing serious felonies to lesser felonies so all of his theme for running his in-office practice has led to I think New York the last two years have had the highest uh crime rate on the big seven crimes in the last 20 years but he's taken this a step further because again it's somewhat benign to say I won't prosecute trespassing but this sort of opened the door for the political prosecution of Donald Trump which as we've seen you know now it's taken from not Prosecuting to identifying a political opponent and Prosecuting them for political reasons I'll talk to somewhat in my testimony hopefully about the reasons behind the prosecution the errors in the case and how the immunity decision affects the case and I thank you for your time and I look forward to your questions and I apolog olizee for going a little bit over that's fine Mr F thank you uh