Who is Alvin Bragg? What to know about the Manhattan district attorney investigating Trump.

• Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is leading the Trump investigation into Stormy Daniels' hush money payoff.
• Bragg will oversee the prosecution if the grand jury indicts the former president.
• Trump has lashed out at Bragg online, hurling insults and conspiracy claims against him.

To Donald Trump, he's a "racist," a "WOKE TYRANT" who is letting murderers "WALK FREE."

The former president was describing his latest nemesis: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, that office's first Black DA, a white-collar crimes expert who is overseeing the investigation into Trump that could lead to the first indictment of an ex-president. 

Bragg has given few details about the probe — an investigation that began in 2019 under his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, and is now before a grand jury. His office has been looking into Trump's alleged role in a 2016 "hush-money" payment of $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels, who said she slept with Trump in 2006.

Trump has denied both the alleged affair with Daniels and any wrongdoing in the hush-money scheme. He has increasingly targeted Bragg in public statements and his attorneys have told Insider they believe the investigation into the potential falsifying of business records has "no legal merit." 

The DA's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Bragg has experience prosecuting white-collar crime

Bragg, a 49-year-old graduate of Harvard Law School, has spent roughly two decades working as a prosecutor, frequently focusing on white-collar crime. He was a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and later served as New York's chief deputy attorney general.

Prior to his current investigation into Trump, Bragg, who is a Democrat, was perhaps best known for working on high-profile cases like the 2022 indictment of Steve Bannon and We Build the Wall. He also won the tax-fraud conviction of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's former chief financial officer.

Bragg has boasted in the past of suing Trump or his administration more than 100 times. He led the New York attorney general's successful 2018 lawsuit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which paid $2 million in court-ordered damages for illegally misusing charitable funds. 

During his tenure in the attorney general's office, Bragg also worked on high-profile investigations into Harvey Weinstein and his company's work environment, and into the New York Police Department's use of the controversial stop-and-frisk policy. 

His team last year opted not to pursue a different indictment against Trump in connection to his business practices. Two prosecutors leading the investigation resigned following Bragg's decision, and one of them released a book earlier this year revealing that he had sought to pursue racketeering charges against Trump.

The former prosecutor harshly criticized Bragg, who had raised concerns about the evidence against Trump and argued that "more work was needed." 

Bragg is highly controversial for his approach to crime 

Beyond the ongoing Trump investigation, Bragg has been harshly criticized for being too lenient while the city struggles with rising crime. Within the last year, the city documented a surge in many crime categories, such as assaults, robberies, burglaries, and grand larcenies, though murders and shootings both dropped in 2022.

One of Bragg's first and most controversial moves upon taking office was to issue a so-called Day One memo instructing prosecutors to only seek jail or prison time for criminals convicted of the most violent offenses, such as murder or sexual assault, and to avoid requesting prison sentences over 20 years, barring "exceptional circumstances." Bragg's stance provoked instant blowback in New York City and in conservative media.

Bragg had to walk back several of his policies in his instructions to prosecutors, including failing to list gun possession as a crime warranting jail time and refraining from charging certain armed robberies as felonies. He later clarified that his memo was not binding and that individual cases would be left to prosecutors' best discretion.

Bragg is one of several prominent and controversial progressive prosecutors — like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Kim Foxx in Chicago, and formerly Chesa Boudin of San Francisco — who have focused their efforts on criminal justice reform and reducing incarceration. Bragg has said incarcerating people for nonviolent or minor offenses "makes us less safe," and has identified mental illness and addiction as root causes of crime.

Trump and his supporters have seized on Bragg's progressive criminal justice policies, especially as his investigation has progressed. On Wednesday, Trump suggested on the social media platform Truth Social that Bragg should be focusing on tackling crime in the city instead of investigating him, lamenting that "our once beautiful and safe Manhattan" is now "an absolute HELLHOLE."

As the grand jury probe has neared weighing charges, Trump has escalated his attacks. He's suggested Bragg committed a sexual impropriety and repeatedly slammed him as "Soros-backed," trying to tie him to a wealthy Jewish philanthropist who is a bogeyman on right-wing media. Bragg received campaign donations from a political action committee to which Soros had contributed.