President Donald Trump has a long list of perceived enemies that he has attempted to weaponize the Justice Department against, but as one CNN anchor argued on Saturday, there could be a very important reason that he has not gone after possibly his biggest of his “legal nemeses.”
During the Saturday morning CNN broadcast, host Michael Smerconish discussed the former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci’s congressional testimony, in which he pleaded the Fifth over 100 times while being grilled about COVID-19 conspiracy theories by Republican lawmakers. While arguing that Fauci’s decision might have been a mistake, Smerconish ultimately noted that he could understand the decision “to wrap himself in the pardon given to him on the last day of President [Joe] Biden’s administration, which protects everything up through January of 2025,” given Trump’s established trend of going after his perceived enemies in court.
Smerconish argued that Fauci “was hesitant to testify in a climate of legal weaponization” created by Trump, before launching into a long list of names already targeted by his DOJ: James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, John Bolton, John Brennan, Lisa Cook, Jerome Powell, Mark Kelly, Eric Swalwell, Fani Willis and Jack Smith.
Conspicuously absent from that list, Smerconish argued, is Alvin Bragg, the current District Attorney for New York County. Bragg is notable as the only one of Trump’s many legal nemeses who was actually able to secure a felony conviction against him, with Trump being found guilty in 2024 on 34 counts related to his “hush money” case, in which he directed funds to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about an affair before the 2016 election and falsified business records to keep the payments a secret.
In light of that slight against him, it appears notable that Trump has not made any move to go after Bragg in retaliation. During his segment on Saturday, Smerconish put forward his own personal theory about why the president might be giving Bragg a pass: because he helped him get reelected.
“Curious that among all of Trump’s legal nemeses, only Alvin Bragg has thus far escaped scrutiny like the others,” the host said. “And he’s the one who convicted Trump. I have a theory about that. That case actually did more to elect Donald Trump than any of the others that he faced. And maybe Trump agrees with me.”
Elsewhere in the segment, Smerconish elaborated further: “Now, you’ve heard me say before, I don’t think Donald Trump should have been indicted four times. Those indictments they played to his benefit, especially that which resulted in a conviction due to the hush money payments. That’s the case pursued by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. During the campaign, Trump told a CPAC conference, I am your retribution. I don’t know if he delivered for that audience, but he’s surely been his own avenger.”