After winning a competitive Democratic primary and an easy general election in 2021, Alvin Bragg made history by becoming the first Black Manhattan district attorney.

"From day one, I'll work to make the office the progressive leader it should be," Bragg promised in campaign commercials.

But his tenure started with controversy.

As soon as he took office, at a time when New Yorkers were concerned about the increase in violent crime, Bragg sent a memo informing his staff that the office would avoid prosecuting fare beating, resisting arrest and other non-violent crimes. The immediate backlash caused him to quickly walk it back.

"I'm gonna let other people, you know, do the politics, right? We're gonna focus on law, evidence, facts," Bragg said last year.

Since then, Bragg has been an easy target of conservative media and Republican officials who have asked for his dismissal, and now are even demanding he is put in jail.

A Harlem native who earned a law degree from Harvard, Bragg worked under New York attorneys general Eliot Spitzer and Eric Schneiderman. He has also served as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York.

In December, Bragg won a conviction of the Trump Organization on tax fraud and conspiracy charges.

"This kind of pervasive fraud, bilking the taxpayers, should be met with stiffer penalties," Bragg said. "The former president's companies now stand convicted of crimes. That is consequential. It underscores that in Manhattan we have one standard of justice for all."

But for a year, Bragg has hesitated on whether to keep pursuing the years-long investigation over Trump's hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Then in January, he decided to convene a grand jury, a process that now seems to be coming to an end and that could become the defining moment of his career.