A major part of the Media Research Center’s victimhood narrative for Donald Trump regarding his myriad legal entanglements has been to throw around broad-brush smears of those prosecuting him as partisan Democrats. It did so just before his New York trial, but the MRC set up that narrative months earlier. A September 2023 post by Rich Noyes (also promoted that day on the MRC’s podcast) complained:
TV news coverage of the 2024 campaign has been dominated by the legal cases brought against the Republican frontrunner, former President Donald Trump. Yet even though these cases are taking place in the obviously partisan environment of a presidential election, an examination of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage finds the networks rarely identified even elected Democratic prosecutors as “Democrats.”
Key findings:
■ 97.9% of stories FAILED to identify Special Counsel Jack Smith as selected by Democratic Attorney General Merrick Garland;
■ 88.4% of stories FAILED to identify Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg as a Democrat;
■ 93.3% of stories FAILED to identify Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis as a Democrat.
■ ABC’s World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News NEVER labeled Bragg or Willis as Democrats.Details:
Between January 1 and August 31, former President Trump received a total of 894 minutes of coverage on ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News. The vast majority of this time (772 minutes, or 86% of Trump’s total coverage) was consumed by the various legal cases against him. Topping the list: the Florida documents case (215 minutes), the federal case into Trump’s post-2020 election activities (190 minutes), the Manhattan “hush money” case (172 minutes) and the Georgia election case (106 minutes).
Yet even as these legal dramas dominate the political discourse, the networks have strained to present the prosecutors as non-partisan actors — even those who ran and won their offices as Democratic partisans.
In targeting Bragg, Noyes wrote:
The so-called “hush money” charges against Trump were brought in April by Manhattan’s D.A. Alvin Bragg, who ran and won office as a Democrat in 2021. During his campaign, Bragg frequently reminded voters how in an earlier case he had successfully sued the Trump Foundation, promising: “I know how to follow the facts and hold people in power accountable.”
[…]Bragg also prosecuted the Trump Organization on tax charges. Since January 1, the evening newscasts aired seven stories about that case, one of which (on ABC) mentioned Bragg by name. None labeled the D.A. as a Democrat.
Noyes didn’t explain why it was a bad thing for a prosecutor to be proud of his record of holding people and organizations accountable for their criminal misdeeds, or why the Trump Foundation should be held above the law. Further, the right-wing Washington Examiner article Noyes quoted admitted that Bragg did not, in fact, prosecuting Trump: “No, Bragg did not specifically pledge, ‘If elected, I will indict Donald J. Trump.’ But he promised to pursue Trump and hold him ‘accountable,’ which is liberal code for going after Trump in any way possible.”
After the verdict, the MRC’s attacks on Bragg continued. Mark Finkelstein ranted in a May 31 post that it was fallacious to claim that Bragg was just doing his job:
On Friday’s Morning Joe, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin, the show’s go-to person on the Trump trial, commenting on the reaction to the guilty verdicts by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and his prosecutorial team, made a flabbergasting claim: “This is not a group of people, despite what Donald Trump and his Republican allies are saying, that relished this victory, that are rejoicing in it.”
The prosecutors, knowing that the cameras of the world were upon them, might have been able to restrain their enthusiasm. But does Rubin really expect us to believe that—their outward demeanor notwithstanding—on the inside it wasn’t unrestrained revelry?
After all, as even the New York Times has reported, Bragg ran for DA on the platform of being the best person to prosecute Trump. So now that his big day has arrived, Bragg & Co. weren’t “relishing and rejoicing?” Riight.
Finkelstein offered no proof of partisan motivation or that Bragg would be proud of anything other than being a professional who succeeded at his job.
A June 1 post by Sarah Butler pushed the right-wing narrative that Bragg was politically motivated:
On Thursday, CNN’s Laura Coates defended Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the outcome of the Trump trial. In response to those opposing the verdict, Coates argued: “you can’t pick and choose whether the system is fair based on the particular outcome of somebody you’re aligned with.” Congressman Byron Donald reminded Coates that Bragg had campaigned primarily on “getting Trump.”
Coates claimed that Bragg had no political intentions in bringing the case against Trump. She noted that although Trump and Biden were political opponents, Bragg was “not under the purview of the Department of Justice.”
Donalds countered by pointing out why Bragg had run for District Attorney of Manhattan in the first place: “His entire campaign was focused on getting Donald Trump.” Donalds was correct; Bragg often had mentioned litigation against the former president during his campaign.
P.J. Gladnick perpetuated the narrative in a June 2 post:
As we’ve noted for months, the Democrat-allied media energetically present Trump’s prosecutors as nonpartisans enforcing a “rule of law.” They couldn’t possibly be prosecuting Trump to advance their career among Democrats.
Just about five hours after the guilty verdicts were announced on Thursday, Politico published “Will Trump’s guilty verdict hurt him?” by Adam Wren and Lisa Kashinsky. About halfway into the story is a section that can be best described as blatant Alvin Bragg adulation, “Alvin Bragg sealed his place in Democratic lore,” in which the authors conceded that their beloved Bragg ran on a “Get Trump” platform thus revealing that his case was extremely political, especially since it was delayed to serve as election interference.
In fact, the phrase “Get Trump” appears nowhere in the Politico article, nor does Gladnick or anyone else quote Bragg as saying it. Still, Gladnick didn’t explain why it was a bad thing for a prosecutor to want to hold powerful people accountable for their actions or why Trump must remain above the law; instead, he sneered, “Thank you for that amazing admission that most of the rest of us already knew about Bragg.”
Tim Graham got help from a fellow right-wing outlet in pushing the narrative in a June 4 post:
The “independent fact-checkers” have repeatedly pounced on Donald Trump claiming Biden and his team are behind Alvin Bragg’s prosecution, especially CNN’s Daniel Dale, who was a triggered Tigger on this accusation.
Margot Cleveland at The Federalist offers some hard facts for the pro-Biden media to face in an article headlined “Joe Biden’s Fingerprints Are All Over The Criminal Prosecutions Of Donald Trump.”
At least Dale would feint toward Bragg relying on prosecutorial help from Matthew Colangelo, who came over from being the #3 official in Biden’s Justice Department.
As we’ve noted, the invocation of Colangelo just a bogus right-wing conspiracy theory used to push the never-proven idea that President Biden personally pushed for Trump’s prosecution, and correlation does not equal causation. Still, Graham ranted: “The pro-Biden law firm collaborated with the pro-Biden media to make sure Trump stayed on the path to indictment and conviction.”
The MRC is apparently collaborating with the Trump re-election campaign to try and discredit the criminal justice system and create victimhood for Trump where none actually exists. Like the rest of the MRC, Graham wants Trump to be held above the law — otherwise, why would he and his co-workers attack the prosecutor so aggressively for doing his job?