Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who is expected to announce he is running for president in the coming months, just keeps getting under fact-checkers' skin. As our friends at Twitchy highlighted, this includes PolitiFact, which rated comments from DeSantis about Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg as "true," yet still couldn't help themselves from coming after him.
The fact-check mentions it is specifically addressing DeSantis' remarks that Bragg "has downgraded over 50% of the felonies to misdemeanors," as mentioned during a March 20 press conference. Not long after, a Manhattan grand jury indicted former and potentially future President Donald Trump on charges brought forth by Bragg. It was later revealed that Bragg was bringing forth 34 felony charges against Trump in an unprecedented move, despite how charges could have been brought as misdemeanors, and there being an expired statue of limitations.
When it comes to the fact-check, notice the "but" in the tweet. The same point is mentioned in the actual fact-check as well, which again, rates DeSantis' claims as "true."
Yes, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has downgraded felonies as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, but it’s a common practice among peer counties. https://t.co/To8hRQb0iV
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) April 11, 2023
The tweet from Tuesday morning has over 300 replies taking issue with the tweet, and a majority of the retweets are quoted tweets doing the same.
"In 2022, the first year Alvin Bragg served as Manhattan district attorney, his staff downgraded 52% of felonies that were screened to misdemeanors, an increase from prior years," a summary of the fact-check begins by mentioning. That's it, that's all that should matter.
Here's what the fact-check thought necessary to add, though, with added emphasis:
In 2022, Manhattan prosecutors reviewed 15,710 felony arrests and the office declined to prosecute 1,225 of them, or 7.8%. Of the felony cases that survived review, 52% were downgraded to a misdemeanor, 7% were downgraded to a lower-level felony, 8% were upgraded to a different felony, 33% were an equivalent felony, and in 0.1% of cases, 12 in all, the charge was downgraded to a violation. The data does not signal why prosecutors changed the charges, though experts told us this practice is not unusual.
Under Bragg, prosecutors downgraded a greater share of felony charges to misdemeanors than in recent history in Manhattan. In 2021, under his predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., 47% of felonies were downgraded to misdemeanors. In 2020, when the city was strained by COVID-19 quarantines and related judicial delays, that figure was 35%. It was 39% in 2019 and 40% in 2018.
2023 data shows that so far, 54% of felonies have been downgraded to misdemeanors.
But in the recent past, before Bragg took over, the rates of downgrading felonies to misdemeanors were higher in other New York City boroughs. Similar state data compiled by the Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice show that in 2021, the most recent year with available data, three other boroughs had higher rates: 56% in the Bronx, 57% in Brooklyn and 59% in Queens. (This data, which could have included a different set of cases, showed that in Manhattan in 2021, the rate was 52%.)
It's already worth wondering why it matters that nearby boroughs downgraded felonies at higher rates, but as one can see from the fact-check, this was "before Bragg took over," which makes it even more questionable, pointless even, that such a point would be included.
Bringing the conversation back to Bragg's political crusade against Trump, the fact-check also fails to mention how Bragg brought forward felony charges when they could have been misdemeanors. Here's what was mentioned when it comes to Trump:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joined his fellow Republicans in attacking Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who presented evidence against former President Donald Trump to a grand jury. Trump, whom the grand jusry indicted, faces 34 felony counts and is accused of falsifying business records to protect his presidential aspirations.
...
Bragg’s approach to running the district attorney’s office has been criticized by Republican since he took office in January 2022. The case against Trump has increased GOP attacks on Bragg, a former federal prosecutor from Harlem.
Not long after the indictment, Mia wrote up a deep dive explainer on the charges that Bragg shrugged off to go after Trump.
This is not the only time that PolitiFact has taken issue with DeSantis. A particularly egregious example came from March of last year, when a fact-check claimed his comments on the efficacy of masks and whether people still wore them were "false." The governor has also not been afraid to be at odds with Soros-backed DAs before, as is the case not only with Bragg, but Andrew Warren, whom DeSantis removed. The issue of whether to reinstate him is now before the courts, though a district judge ruled in January that he didn't have the power to reinstate Warren.