What Crisis Response Is Like Inside the Manhattan DA’s Office

Just three days after a grand jury in New York County reportedly voted to indict former President Donald Trump, his latest criminal defense attorney, Joseph Tacopina, began his campaign to rally the base.

Calling the impending arraignment of his client a “political persecution,” rather than “political prosecution,” he invoked terminology on Palm Sunday that might be used in Christian households during Holy Week.

Is Donald Trump akin to Jesus Christ, or even Jesus Christ Superstar, as Tacopina might want us to believe? I refuse to take the bait. I have seen Tacopina in action before, having worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for 11 years. I oversaw communications and external affairs in various capacities for former District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.—who initiated the present inquiry into the former president.

In April 2011, I spent many hours over six weeks as a spectator during a high-profile rape trial involving two New York City police officers. I had plenty of opportunity to observe Tacopina up close—two floors down from where Judge Juan Merchan is expected to preside over the Trump arraignment on April 4.

Tacopina’s courtroom demeanor was brash, impressive, and distasteful. The “fusillade” he aimed at the woman accusing his client, Kenneth Moreno, of rape while on the job was difficult to watch. He practiced an extremely harsh brand of victim-blaming that sparked the ire of national women’s advocacy groups.

Then suddenly in the middle of summations during the Moreno trial, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, was hauled off a plane at John F. Kennedy Airport on May 14 and arrested after being accused of sexual assault.

Vance’s chief assistant, Daniel R. Alonso, said at the time, “This office will never shy away from tough cases.” Vance noted, “The case has been handled in the right fashion, based on the facts we’ve known at every stage … We don’t pick our victims, and we don’t pick the circumstances under which these cases come to us.” These statements arguably apply to the present circumstances.

Press-wise, that case bears many similarities to what is about to happen. Much has changed about how news is delivered over the past decade, and the speculative charges against Donald Trump are quite different from the sexual assault charges Strauss-Kahn faced.

But both cases were brought by the same state prosecutor’s office against a former world leader. The District Attorney’s office learned a lot about what to do—and not do—from DSK, and is surely applying that institutional knowledge 12 years later.

Much like Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg today, back in 2011, Vance was in his second year leading the office. Everyone Monday-morning quarterbacked the DSK case, criticizing an office that, at the time, handled more than 110,000 cases a year, and distilling it down to a handful of so-called “botched” prosecutions by “black-eye Cy.”

Inside the office, we knew those comments from people in the bleachers were preposterous and a distraction from the real work protecting crime victims, which required tuning out some commentators and media outlets that were prone to politically motivated criticism.

While Strauss-Kahn’s case ended in spectacular fashion—including a press conference to announce the dismissal of charges interrupted by an earthquake—there is no reason to believe Donald Trump’s will suffer the same fate. Vance said the Strauss-Kahn investigation could have benefited from more time.

If anything, the Trump investigation has been painfully protracted, resulting in reviews “by two separate district courts, two separate courts of appeal, and twice by the US Supreme Court, all of whom found no evidence that politics was motivating our actions,” as Vance told NBC’s Meet the Press on April 2.

Communications in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office—and indeed, in every prosecutor’s office in the country—should serve no more than a glorified public information function. “Public Info” is what the “Communications Office” or “Press Office” used to be called in the era of faxing criminal complaints to news assignment desks.

In some ways, it’s less art than science—there are things you can’t say at certain points and things that you can say at others. The office abides by the New York Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 3.6 relating to “Trial Publicity.” I had posted Rule 3.6 on the bulletin board in our office, terrified that a slip of the tongue would tank an important case or prejudice a jury.

Working in communications for the Manhattan office, there are so many days you arrive at the office with a pit in your stomach. During Strauss-Kahn, a city of tents was set up in the park across from 100 Centre Street for an entire summer to enable broadcast live shots to be filmed on the fly.

I imagine many current Manhattan District Attorney staffers are arriving at work this week with a similar feeling, being escorted by extra layers of security into an office to perform a critical civic and public safety duty that they do not nearly receive enough money to do.

In the end, many reached the same conclusion as New York Times columnist Joe Nocera—that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office “did the right thing” in dismissing charges against Strauss-Kahn.

I hope the press and public arrive at the same conclusion about Bragg’s handling of the Trump investigation, as his office has followed the facts where they have lead, without fear or favor.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

Author Information

Joan Vollero is managing director at ICR specializing in litigation communications. She was formerly director of communications in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and senior adviser to former District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.

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