Cyrus Vance Jr., recently departed DA of Manhattan County (also known as New York County), was either a bit of a coward, corrupt or both. Prior to Trump’s run for president he helped out with making a bad story go away for the future transactional strongman. Vance dismissed an investigation into apparent violations of the law by Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. after they made wildly false claims, fraudulently false claims, to sell apartments in the failed Trump SoHo. A generous bag of campaign money landing on Vance’s desk is said to have preceded Vance’s decision to dismiss the criminal probe into what appeared to be a clear cut set of illegal, profit-driven lies told by the Trump siblings.

Vance’s belated principled decision to begin a criminal investigation of Trump’s shady business practices was launched late in his tenure. Once it got up to speed, two specialized white collar and RICO prosecutors in place and the grand jury investigation in full swing, Vance announced that he would not run for re-election, leaving it up to his successor to actually prosecute Trump. Current DA Alvin Bragg, absent secret reasons that he’s also hiding, ones that would make him look better than any other politician vetted for cowardice and practical flexibility, the bona fides for the job, is another one. At first he lied about his intentions, even hiring a new lead prosecutor, a white collar criminal defense attorney, a few days before dismissing the grand jury that was apparently, according to the two prosecutors whose resignation letters Bragg will not release, ready to indict Donald Trump for a few of his many crimes in a life of unaccountability..

I’ll let Glenn Kirschner describe exactly why Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg appears to be a sad pile of shit.