The One Percent Doctrine

 

     Let's talk about Leslie B. Dubeck. Who is she? Essentially, she's Alvin Bragg's lawyer, his General Counsel within the Manhattan DA's office. Dubeck is one of those people that inevitably pop up in the peripheries of large news stories such as Donald Trump's criminal indictment.

     As the person tasked with watching Bragg's back, she has no other remit. She's not involved in the slightest with Trump's 34 criminal charges. That means she can spend all the time in the world looking out for the DA's best legal interests. One of them was a week ago when she'd written to Jim Jordan's, Bryan Steil's and James Comer's committees.

     Those three committees, Judiciary, House Administration and Oversight, were the ones that had drafted and sent to Bragg's office that neolithically stupid letter all but demanding he go to Washington and give the committees details of what the charges were. They didn't seem to be dissuaded at all by the fact that unsealing that indictment would've been illegal for Bragg to do or that Congress's legal purview and authority over the Manhattan DA's office is literally nonexistent.

     Bragg, as he's expected to do, has ignored their letters. In the second letter, Jordan and Co. made it known that the Manhattan DA's office benefits from federal funding and, gee, wouldn't it be a shame if something... happened to it?

     Well, being the Manhattan DA's General Counsel, Dubeck was all too well aware that the federal government provides just 1% of the DA's office's overall budget. Furthermore, she added that since 2015, that same office had secured for the federal treasury about a billion dollars in asset forfeitures. This means, of course, that the Manhattan DA's office kicks back to the federal government far more money than it takes from Uncle Sam.

     But Jordan represents a picayune district in which the biggest town is Mansfield, Ohio, a burg with about 47,000 people. Jordan's trying to play with the big dogs, specifically the ones in Manhattan. And because Manhattan is one of the largest financial centers on earth, it only follows that it would specialize in white collar crimes such as tax evasion. This means the Manhattan DA's office is a bigger cash cow than most red states that take from Uncle Sam more than they pay back.

     Dubeck's letter then brilliantly sets a trap in its peroration, specifically the final paragraph, when she invites Jordan to sit down with the DA's attorneys and lay out what he wants from them. Maybe Jordan's too smart and will sense a trap in this or maybe he'll lead with his chin and walk into it.

 

     Either way, Jordan got smacked for the second time like a puppy getting a love tap with a rolled up newspaper. For the most part, Dubeck's pair of letters to Jordan, et. al. were necessary and unnecessary at the same time. She shouldn't have had to write them and, in the act of doing so, she was serving notice to House Republicans that she wasn't taking any shit from them and that they'd better stay in their lane.