Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly made false and unsubstantiated claims while denouncing the Manhattan criminal case against him over his alleged falsification of business records related to a hush money scheme executed during the 2016 presidential election.
With Trump’s trial scheduled to start Monday, here is a fact check of some of Trump’s remarks.
Trump’s baseless claims that Biden is secretly running the case
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Manhattan case has been secretly orchestrated by President Joe Biden, Biden’s White House or the Biden-era federal Justice Department. As supposed evidence, Trump has cited the fact that Matthew Colangelo, who had served as a senior Justice Department official under Biden, left the department in 2022 for a job in the office of the Manhattan district attorney who is prosecuting the case, Alvin Bragg.
For example, Trump said in February: “What it is, is election interference. It’s being run by Joe Biden’s White House. His top person was placed here in order to make sure everything goes right.” He continued, “His top person, Colangelo, and some others have been placed into the DA’s office to make sure they do a good job of election interference.” Trump claimed in a social media post in March that unspecified Biden “Thugs” sent Colangelo to the district attorney’s office to “oversee” Bragg, “perhaps to make sure that Bragg followed their illegal orders and commands.” In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump wrote, “BIDEN’S DOJ IS RUNNING THE CASE.”
Facts First: There is no basis for Trump’s claims. First, there is no evidence that Biden, his White House or his Justice Department has had any role in launching or running Bragg’s case, let alone that Biden operatives are issuing secret commands in the case – and Bragg is a locally elected official who does not report to the federal government. Second, there is no evidence the White House or the Biden administration had anything to do with Colangelo’s decision to leave the Justice Department and join the district attorney’s office as senior counsel to Bragg; Colangelo and Bragg had been colleagues before Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney in 2021. Third, there is no basis for the claim that Colangelo oversees Bragg; Bragg is Colangelo’s boss.
Before Colangelo worked at the Justice Department, he and Bragg worked at the same time in the office of New York’s state attorney general, where Colangelo investigated Trump’s charity and Trump’s financial practices and was involved in bringing various lawsuits against the Trump administration.
On a minor point, Colangelo was never Biden’s very top official at the Justice Department. Colangelo served as acting associate attorney general in the first months of the Biden administration in early 2021 and then as principal deputy associate attorney general. As acting associate attorney general, he was third in command of the department.
Trump’s false claims that Manhattan has hit all-time highs for murder and violent crime
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Bragg is spending time prosecuting him despite a record-high number of murders and violent crime in Manhattan, one of New York City’s five boroughs.
Facts First: Trump’s claims are not even close to true; Manhattan, like New York City as a whole, is nowhere near record highs for murder or violent crime more broadly. In 1990, when New York City set its all-time murder record, Manhattan recorded 503 murders; it recorded 73 murders in 2023, a decline of about 85%. Manhattan’s numbers for other kinds of violent crime are also far lower today than they were in the early 1990s.
For example, Manhattan recorded 252 rapes in 2023, down about 63% from the 689 in 1990; 3,841 robberies in 2023, down about 86% from the 26,907 in 1990; and 5,116 felony assaults in 2023, down about 49% from the 10,089 in 1990.
It’s also worth noting that murder in Manhattan has declined since…
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