Good morning. Today we'll look at a sudden blow to the criminal investigation of former President Donald J. Trump in Manhattan, and the promise of safety barriers for some subway platforms after a fatal shoving death. |
 | | Erin Schaff/The New York Times |
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More than a year after leaving the White House, former President Donald J. Trump has largely disappeared from New York and made Florida his new home base. |
But he has remained a subject of several inquiries in New York, the longest tenured of which was a criminal investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. |
That investigation suffered a critical blow yesterday when its two leading prosecutors abruptly resigned, following a monthlong pause in which they stopped presenting evidence to a grand jury, according to people with knowledge of the matter. |
According to those people, the prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted their resignation because Mr. Bragg told them he had serious doubts about proceeding with the high-stakes criminal investigation into the former president's business practices. |
Another criminal investigation, in Westchester County, is examining Mr. Trump's financial dealings at one of his company's golf courses. And a judge in Atlanta approved the convening of a grand jury to examine Mr. Trump's attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. |
The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, is leading a civil inquiry into whether the Trump Organization may have misrepresented the value of its properties. Last week, her office received a judge's approval to question Mr. Trump and two of his adult children under oath. |
But the most developed of the three criminal inquiries into Mr. Trump has been the district attorney's criminal investigation, which began in the summer of 2018 under Cyrus R. Vance Jr., Mr. Bragg's predecessor. |
A once active case stalls |
The investigation has moved ahead in fits and starts. By last fall, a special grand jury convened in a Lower Manhattan courthouse was hearing testimony from witnesses. |
Even after Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, inherited the case upon taking office on Jan. 1, he seemed to be actively forging ahead with the grand jury phase of the investigation. |
But in recent weeks, appearances at the courthouse by witnesses and by Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz had dropped off. Suddenly, the case seemed mysteriously on pause. |
Mr. Bragg has made few public statements about the status of the inquiry in his early tenure in office, which has already been off to a rocky start. A memo he released in early January outlining his progressive prosecutorial policies caused a serious backlash from people who regarded it as too lenient. |
If Mr. Bragg were to ultimately close the investigation, he could face further political fallout in Manhattan, where Mr. Trump is generally loathed. |
Mr. Dunne, who served as Mr. Vance's general counsel and stayed on to help Mr. Bragg with the Trump investigation, declined to comment. |
Mr. Pomerantz, a prominent former prosecutor and defense lawyer recruited by Mr. Vance to help lead the investigation, confirmed in a brief interview that he had resigned, but declined to elaborate. |
In a statement responding to the resignations of the prosecutors, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg said that he was "grateful for their service" and that the investigation was ongoing. |
Mr. Trump denies inflating his property values or defrauding his lenders, and he has accused Mr. Bragg and Ms. James, both Democrats who are Black, of being politically motivated and "racists." In December, he sued Ms. James, seeking to halt the inquiry. |
It's a mostly cloudy day with steady temps in the mid to low 30s through the night. Prepare for snow late at night and sleet in the wee hours of the morning. |
In effect until March 2 (Ash Wednesday). |
After fatal shove, some safety barriers are coming to the subway |
 | | Gabby Jones for The New York Times |
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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said yesterday that it will install barriers that block access to the tracks at three subway stations, in the latest safety initiative to deal with an increase in subway crime. |
The announcement marks a reversal for the M.T.A., which has long resisted calls for such barriers, calling them impractical, expensive and incompatible with New York's aging, sprawling subway system, reports my colleague Michael Gold. |
As recently as last month, the M.T.A. chief executive, Janno Lieber, said that the barriers — known as platform edge doors or platform screen doors — were unfeasible given the "special complexities" of the system. |
The pivot came after a rise in trespassing on the tracks and several high-profile incidents, including the shoving death of Michelle Alyssa Go, 40, who was pushed off a Times Square platform to her death in front of an oncoming train last month. |
A homeless man was arrested in connection with the crime, which shocked a city already anxious about subway safety. Renewed calls came for the transit agency to explore platform doors, which are used on many subway systems in Europe and Asia. |
In an interview on NY1 on Wednesday, Mr. Lieber said that transit officials would move to install the doors in a pilot program at the Times Square station, one of the system's busiest. The doors will be placed on the No. 7 line platform, not on the R train platform where Ms. Go was shoved. |
Barriers will also be installed in the Sutphin Boulevard-Archer Avenue–J.F.K. Airport station in Queens and the Third Avenue L station in Manhattan. |
Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul addressed subway safety concerns on Friday by announcing the deployment of police officers and mental health workers in an effort to remove the more than 1,000 homeless people who regularly shelter in the subway system. |
But then, at least eight violent incidents took place in the subway over the weekend, only one of which involved an attacker who appeared to be homeless. |
They found outreach workers at Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan largely being rebuffed in their attempts to offer homeless people a bed in a group shelter. |
They saw commuters avoiding cars with homeless people sleeping across several seats. In some stations, commuters noticed fewer homeless people. |
One woman, Judith Williams, said she has lived in and around the subway for years and has noticed fewer people sleeping sprawled out on trains in the last couple of days. |
"Maybe they're getting the message," she said Tuesday at a station in Brooklyn. |
I was at brunch with my family, and we were sitting near the front door. |
A man with gray hair, a mustache and a friendly disposition walked past us on his way out. Then he stopped in the doorway, turned toward the table behind ours and addressed the couple sitting there. |
"Y'know," he said, "I just retired after 30 years with the M.T.A. I was a conductor on the subway." |
"Congratulations!" one of the people at the table said. |
"And y'know, you look really familiar," the man said. "I think I closed the doors on you once as you were running to catch the train and I left you out in the rain." |
The couple looked at each other in disbelief and then back toward the man. |
"Oh, I'm just kidding," he said. "I say that to everybody. Enjoy your lunch." |
— Spencer Francus. lllustrated by Agnes Lee. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — C.K. |
Melissa Guerrero, Jeff Boda and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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