Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggs’s case against former President Donald Trump on Sunday as “weak” and politically motivated.
“You don’t have to be a lawyer to look at this case and think it’s on pretty weak grounds,” Crenshaw said on CNN’s State of the Union. “This is just very clearly a very weak case.”
WATCH: BILL BARR CALLS TRUMP INDICTMENT AN ‘ABUSE OF THE PROSECUTIVE FUNCTION’
The Texas congressman added, “Whatever evidence they might have, you’re still talking about the very low level business fraud charges. So I think people need to ask themselves a fundamental question: If this were anyone but Trump, would this DA even take up this case?”
Crenshaw ripped Bragg’s record of ignoring other criminal cases and allowing rising crime in Manhattan.
“I mean, this DA has a habit of not taking up cases that are pretty serious, like violent crime and prostitution rings, things like that. But he chooses to take up this one. It feels obvious to a lot of us that it’s politically motivated. It’s personally motivated,” Crenshaw said.
Bash responded to Crenshaw’s claims, saying that she was “not sure that’s accurate” to say Manhattan district attorney isn’t bringing up violent crime charges.
During the first days of Bragg’s time in office as district attorney, he pushed for finding “alternatives to incarceration,” shorter sentences, avoiding pretrial detention and reducing the number of minors tried as adults in court. Bragg refused to prosecute 35% of major felony cases, including those for murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto. The city saw a significant increase in crime, with major felonies skyrocketing by 26% between 2021 and 2022, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center.
“To be clear, we don’t know what the charges are,” the CNN host responded to the Texas Republican about Trump’s indictment.
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Bash followed up with two questions on whether there are any circumstances in which it would be appropriate to prosecute a former president and whether former presidents should be immune from criminal charges.
Crenshaw said that former presidents should “definitely not be immune from criminal charges,” but reiterated to the CNN host that Bragg’s case was “very clearly personally motivated.”
