Led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Republicans launched attacks against New York’s public safety policies, while Democrats slammed their GOP colleagues’ effort to characterize New York City as crime-ridden and advocated for gun control at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Manhattan on Monday.

It's the latest move by Republicans who are upset with Donald Trump's indictment and an escalation in their war on the prosecutor who charged him, trying to embarrass him on his home turf partly by falsely portraying New York City as a place overrun by crime.

What You Need To Know

  • Republicans upset with Donald Trump's indictment are escalating their war on the prosecutor who charged him, trying to embarrass him on his home turf

  • The House Judiciary Committee held a field hearing Monday near the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg

  • The committee's Republican majority is billed it as an examination of the Democrat's "pro-crime, anti-victim" policies

  • Democrats said the hearing is a partisan stunt aimed at amplifying conservative anger at Bragg, Manhattan's first Black district attorney

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was the focus on Monday at the “field hearing” held in a cramped meeting room on the sixth floor of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in lower Manhattan, just around the corner from the state courthouse where Bragg charged the former president with 34 felony counts less than two weeks ago.

"Ending violence, stopping crime, and supporting victims and their families are the most sacred duties of the Manhattan D.A.'s Office," a spokesperson for Bragg said in a statement after the hearing concluded. "For outside politicians to now appear in New York City on the taxpayer dime for a political stunt is a slap in the face of the dedicated NYPD officers, prosecutors and other public servants who work tirleslly every day with facts and data to keep our home safe."

The committee’s Republican majority zeroed in on Bragg after the news of the indictment first broke in March. Democrats on the committee and in New York City characterized the hearing as political theater intended to run interference for Trump.

“Let me be very clear, you’re here today in lower Manhattan for one reason and one reason only: the chairman is doing the bidding of Donald Trump,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the committee’s top Democrat and former chair.

Nadler’s remarks drew laughs and heckles from the roughly 30 members of the public in attendance, who were largely supportive of the case Republicans were making. Jordan repeatedly had to ask the audience to remain quiet as they cheered the GOP members and insulted the Democrats.

Two audience members were removed from the room by federal agents for outbursts within the first two hours of the Monday morning hearing, one yelling that Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., was a “scumbag.” A press photographer was also removed, but it was not immediately clear why.

“Here in Manhattan, the scales of justice are weighed down by politics," Jordan said in his opening remarks. "To the district attorney, justice isn't blind but about looking for opportunities to advance a political agenda, a radical political agenda. Rather than enforcing the law, the DA is using his office to do the bidding of left-wing campaign funders. He's taken this soft-on-crime approach.”

Others named the left-wing campaign funder on Republicans' minds: billionaire Democratic donor George Soros. Top congressional Republicans and Trump have highlighted the financial support Soros provided to a group that endorsed Bragg during his successful 2021 campaign to become Manhattan’s first Black district attorney.

Soros, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, is a common bogeyman on the right and when “used as a symbol for Jewish control, wealth, and power, the criticism may be an updated version of traditional antisemitic tropes,” according to the American Jewish Council.

A protester outside the building early Monday morning ranted about “Jewish billionaires” and held a sign up that had “SOROS” written on one side along with the Star of David and dollar signs, and “$OROS SATAN” written on the other.

Higher crime rates across the country “is exactly what you get with the Soros-ization of the United States justice system,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. 

“Your public safety as a resident is dramatically impacted by your district attorney and whether he or she is a George Soros-funded rogue prosecutor or a law and order prosecutor,” Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La. said, quoting a report by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. “This is why the Soros-rogue prosecutor movement has concentrated its fire at identifying, recruiting and funding candidates for local district attorney races. By elevating pro-criminal and anti-victim zealots, the rogue prosecutor movement destabilizes the safety of our communities.”

Soros has directly or indirectly donated millions to Democratic, progressive-leaning candidates for district attorney across the country, as he has to Democratic candidates for different offices on the local, state and federal level.

During the hearing and at a press conference prior to the hearing, Democrats called on Republicans to come to the table and negotiate new gun control legislation, particularly in the wake of recent mass shootings.

“If Jim Jordan and his Republican members really cared about protecting New Yorkers, they would join Democrats in addressing the iron pipeline that floods our streets with illegal guns from states with less strict gun laws," Nadler said at the press conference alongside some of his Democratic colleagues and New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Adams welcomed the Republicans to "the safest big city in America" and said no one from his administration or the NYPD was asked to testify.

"We need to be sharing good ideas, particularly off the heels of another mass shooting in our country – at a Sweet 16 birthday party – is making us face the bitter reality of the over-proliferation of guns," Adams said, referencing a Saturday shooting in Alabama that left four dead and over two dozen wounded. "That is where our focus should be."

New York City officials urged Jordan to cancel the hearing. C-SPAN declined to air it on TV.

At the hearing, Democrats successfully added two non-committee members to their roster: Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, both of whom represent parts of Manhattan. Republicans added Rep. Elise Stefanik, who represents the northernmost areas of New York state and is the third ranking GOP member in Congress.

“Before I was involved in public service, as a regular citizen of New York, I fought crime and drugs during the crack wars in northern Manhattan,” Espaillat said, noting a single police precinct in what is now his district used to average 100 homicides a year. “This year the 34th precinct has witnessed zero homicides” and had just five in 2022.

Espaillat, who talked about he and his family being held up at gunpoint, said “this is deeply personal to me” and made the case that violence could be curbed by gun control. He cited federal data that showed 80% of homicides in 2020 involved a firearm.

“The common denominator in most homicides across the country is a gun,” Espaillat shouted, pointing at Jordan and drawing jeers from the crowd. “And you guys brandish your pins with your AR-15s? Reprehensible!”

Some Republicans have begun wearing AR-15 pins in the halls of Congress, outraging Democrats who point to the frequency AR-15s and similar weapons are used in mass shootings, including a recent mass shooting at a Tennessee elementary school that left three 9-year-olds and three staff members dead.

Among those who testified at the hearing were victim rights advocates, the victims of crimes, a gun violence expert and Jose Alba, a bodega worker whose murder charges Bragg dropped after initially prosecuting him for defending himself during a robbery.

“First, I want to make it clear my testimony is not motivated by a political agenda. I am not here to support sides of any particular political party,” a translator said, reading an opening statement for Alba. “I just want to tell the public about the horrible experience I had to go through because of crime in this city.”

Testimony was also heard from Madeline Brame, who blames Bragg for seeking long prison sentences only for two of the four people involved in her son's killing; and Jennifer Harrison, a victim advocate whose boyfriend was killed in New Jersey in 2005 — outside Bragg's jurisdiction and long before he took office.

New York City Councilman Robert Holden, a Democrat who has run on the Republican party line in both of his Council elections, attacked Bragg’s policies and described his city where “fear is an everyday event.” He said his wife, who is Asian American, is unwilling to ride the subway after a series of high-profile attacks on Asian New Yorkers.

“I’m here to address the lawlessness that has taken over this city as a result of the failed progressive policies implemented by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg,” Holden said. “These failed progressive policies reversed 30 years of law and order delivered to the city by the hard working men and women of the NYPD and professional prosecutors that put victims rights ahead of criminals.”

What the data says about crime in NYC

Attacking New York City, and its mostly Democratic leaders, over crime is an old trick for politicians who represent rural and suburban districts. It is a punch that can still land with some audiences, though in reality the city's violent crime rate remains substantially below the U.S. average.

In 2022, Bragg's first year in office, there were 78 homicides in Manhattan, a borough of 1.6 million people. That was a drop of 15% from the year before. By comparison, Palm Beach County, Florida, where Trump is one of about 1.5 million residents, had 96 killings.

"People hear New York and they think crime, and that's because they've been trained to think that way," said Dr. Jeffrey Butts, the director of the Research & Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. "It's not real. It's just the stories that people tell.

"If you're living in some predominantly small, white county in Iowa, you hear New York, and you just imagine all the scary movies and TV shows you've seen," Butts said. "I think that's what Congress is playing off of."

Violent crimes have increased across the city in recent years, though the number of murders in 2022 was at its lowest since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, according to NYPD data. As of April 2, murders, rapes, shootings and robberies were all down, while felony assaults have risen 9% compared to the same period in 2022.

Overall, crime is lower than in the early 2000s and far below the worst years of the 1980s and 1990s.

In Manhattan, where Bragg has jurisdiction, murders, rapes, shootings and robberies continue to decline in 2023 compared to the same period last year, while felony assaults have continued to rise.

According to an analysis by Wirepoints, an Illinois-based research nonprofit, New York City had the 64th lowest homicide rate of the 75 largest cities in the country in 2022 and the lowest rate of any city with more than one million residents.

Bragg’s spokesperson went on to compare New York City’s homicide rate — 5.2 homicides per 100,000 people in 2022 — to Columbus, Ohio’s rate of 15.4 homicides per 100,000. Jordan represents a district just outside of Columbus.

Ohio’s three other major cities have fared even worse, with Toledo, Cincinnati and Cleveland seeing rates of 23.8, 24.9 and 45.7, respectively.

“If Chairman Jordan truly cared about public safety, he could take a short drive to Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron, or Toledo in his home state, instead of using taxpayer dollars to travel hundreds of miles out of his way,” a Bragg spokesperson said last week.

Experts told Spectrum News that even if crime were more of an issue in the Big Apple than elsewhere in the country — and it is not, according to experts and data — no single public official can have such an immediate effect on public safety, negative or positive.

“The idea that one would see an abrupt change in crime rate given the policies of a single individual or agency in the city, it's just not borne out in anything I've ever seen,” said Rick Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the lead author of the Council on Criminal Justice’s January report on crime across the country. “And I've been following crime trends for decades now.”

Mark House, a high school principal in the Bronx, spoke with Spectrum News as he waited on line to attend a prehearing press conference with Adams and Nadler. He said "there's hardly a family or kid who hasn't been touched" by gun violence in his school's community, adding "the neighborhoods are flooded" with weapons.

"If you're going to talk about violence in New York City but ignore guns, what are you doing?" said House, who serves on the New York City regional council of the gun violence organization the Brady campaign. "Nine out of the 10 guns that are used in New York City crimes don't come from New York City. So they want to come here and talk about violence, but they don't want to address guns. Makes no sense."

House himself is a gun owner, licensed in New York to own a rifle, a pistol and a handgun. The state's gun laws are among the most restrictive in the country, but guns still flow into New York from other states with looser statutes. This smuggling phenomenon has been dubbed the "iron pipeline" by law enforcement and officials in the region.

"The whole thing is kind of a sham," House said. "The one thing those guys could actually do is pass some legislation. Common sense. Not banning guns. Doing background checks.

"You've got so many loopholes. I don't mind doing a background check. I don't mind sitting down, making sure I'm a halfway sane person before I purchase a gun," House continued.

He believes Congress should pursue expanded background checks and red flag laws and ensure more consistent gun laws across all the states.

Criticism is nothing new for Bragg

Monday's hearing is the latest salvo in Jordan's weekslong effort to use his congressional powers to defend Trump from what he says is a politically motivated prosecution.

Jordan has sent letters to Bragg demanding testimony and documents, claiming his office is subject to congressional scrutiny because it gets federal grants. He subpoenaed a former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, who previously oversaw the Trump investigation.

Bragg sued Jordan last week to try to block the subpoena, calling it a "brazen and unconstitutional attack" and a "transparent campaign to intimidate" him over the Trump case. A federal judge scheduled an initial hearing for Wednesday.

Forr Bragg, scrutiny from Republicans — and even some Democrats — is nothing new.

A Harvard-educated, former federal prosecutor, chief deputy state attorney general and civil rights lawyer, Bragg won an eight-way Democratic party primary and then soared to victory with 83% of the general election vote.

Soon after taking office, Bragg authored an internal memo that, among other things, said his office would not prosecute certain low-level misdemeanors.

That set up some early clashes with the New York Police Department leadership and also got the attention of Republicans outside the city, who quickly made Bragg a poster child for Democratic permissiveness.

Republican Lee Zeldin, then representing eastern Long Island in Congress, made Bragg a focal point of his campaign for governor, repeatedly promising to remove the independently elected prosecutor from office.

Zeldin lost, but his rhetoric about crime resonated in the suburbs, helping Republicans defeat Democrats in a number of key New York seats.

Despite focusing on Bragg, the House Judiciary Committee did not invited him to testify, nor is anyone from his office expected to participate. 

Bragg's campaign sent an email to supporters Friday deriding the hearing as a "politically motivated sham."

On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the planned hearing "a circus if there ever was one."

Since taking power in the House, Republicans have launched a sweeping oversight agenda delving into the far reaches of President Joe Biden's administration, his family and the workings of the federal government.

While conducting oversight is a key function of Congress, the House GOP's wide-ranging probes have often delivered more sizzle than substance. Long on allegations, committees led by Jordan and others have been slow to produce findings that resonate and sometimes have diverged into conspiracy theories.

Rep. Johnson of Louisiana said the committee is considering holding field hearings on crime in other places and “has about five or six cities on the list,” though none have been scheduled.

Spectrum News' Ari Feldman contributed to this report.