Manhattan District Attorney

I'm Linda Lopez, and here are today's top local stories.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg expected to make an announcement today regarding AI.

This after the leaders of some of the biggest tech companies developing AI sounded the alarm over the weekend that the race to develop the technology may be moving too quickly.

So we're told that the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg will announce some new AI-related initiatives at his press conference this afternoon.

He says not just local governments, but those at every level should be paying attention to how fast that artificial intelligence is growing and how best to regulate it.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, making headlines over the weekend, publishing an essay about how concerned he was as to the speed that companies are developing artificial intelligence.

He says there clearly are not enough safety measures in place to keep up with that speed.

AI's impact on cybersecurity and public safety, we're also expected to hear about that from the Manhattan DA this afternoon.

So we can see here in President Trump's Truth Social post, he says, I am pleased to report that Michael Cohen, the prosecution's star witness and, in actuality, only witness...

In the New York State Attorney General and Manhattan D.A. Witch Hunt cases brought against me has just fully recanted his testimony.

He was pressured and coerced to say things that were not true.

I would like to thank Michael for having the wisdom and courage to step forward and do the right thing.

When he said, I knew what I was doing was illegal, specific language that you heard him say, what did you hear in that strategically that perhaps a non-attorney might have missed?

I mean, I can tell you what I heard, and also I can tell you what I was doing, that while we are listening, and we have an amazing team, both the lawyers and producers, so I'm listening to this plea agreement, knowing that the state case is still going on, and I was texting, I was saying, guys, the SDNY and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office is maybe 500 feet, or no, sorry, 500 yards apart from each other.

We should have someone in the state court because something's going to get filed.

This is part of a larger strategy of, of trying to attack these two cases, let's get ahead of this.

And like, what is what is jurisdiction in a global commerce world? And thinking through some of that, and I was in the tech and litigation space there really briefly, because while I was there, even as a summer associate, I started working with victims of domestic violence in pro bono cases to get protective orders and going to court just as a very junior person just to get these protective orders.

And just that sort of being in court and helping people be empowered to protect themselves and pursue that was just so compelling that I left pretty quickly, clerked for a federal judge and then went to the DA's office in Manhattan full time into public service to do that sort of work, feeling like the protective orders is a great start, but that's not that's not really doing it and wanting to do more sort of full time work.

And that's really that sense of sort of empowering people has been through the through line through all of it.

Like at OFAC worked a lot on the global Magnitsky program, which you did a lot of work at Maine Treasury on as well.

Michael, Rebecca, thank you so much for joining TRM Talks.

This was as amazing as I knew it would be.

know i said this on the show but um you know for me so much of this space and the experience that i've had in over the last six years are are the people and michael and rebecca are are folks i've known even before my time at trm and just so meaningful to be able to have a conversation like this and it's just so cool to see how they've grown but also sort of how the issues have grown i love michael's through line for him as a domestic violence prosecutor at the Manhattan DA's office and then ultimately to FinCEN, but sort of inclusion and privacy and people having an opportunity to access to their funds as such an important piece of his journey.

So that was something that was a huge takeaway for me.