During the weekend, a man from New York state who had a sentence related to drugs that had been commuted by President Donald Trump in 2021 was taken into custody after allegedly hitting a man and his child who was three years old while they were eating a meal on the Sabbath. This information was provided by law enforcement in the Empire State.
According to the documents preserved by the Nassau County District Court, Jonathan Braun, who is 41 years old, is currently facing one case of assault in the second degree, one count of assault in the third degree, and one offence of endangering the welfare of a child.
It is the fourth time that the defendant has been detained since he was released on the final day of Trump’s first term in office, and the charges against him are for a misdemeanour.
Braun is currently being investigated for a total of seven offences all together.
Information received from a criminal complaint by the daily newspaper Newsday, which is situated on Long Island, indicates that the most recent occurrence took place on March 29.
According to the allegations made by the prosecution, Braun was supposed to be holding a Sabbath meal at his residence in Lawrence, which is a little community situated just a few miles southeast of JFK International Airport. Nevertheless, the defendant is said to have lost his temper with one of the guests and the two sons of that guest at some point during the course of the lunch, according to the police.
According to the Nassau County Police Department, Braun ultimately resulted in punching the man in the face on multiple occasions. According to the allegations, the defendant then pushed the man to the ground, which resulted in the man cutting his elbow.
On the other hand, the person who received Trump’s federal grace allegedly did not stop there and shoved the guest’s three-year-old child as well, according to the police.
In the complaint, it is stated that the child who was shoved fell to the ground, which “caused a red mark on his back and substantial pain to his back.”
According to the documents filed with the court, Braun was arraigned on Sunday, following his arrest that evening, and he entered a plea of not guilty. The judge who was acting as the overseer of the case issued a temporary order of protection, and the bond amount for the defendant was set at $25,000. He got freed on Monday of this week.
According to the documents filed with the court, Braun’s counsel of record is the Legal Aid Society of Nassau County; however, it is possible that this information is no longer accurate. Robert Caliendo, an attorney located in Manhattan, has been the defendant’s legal representative over the course of his previous run-ins with the police after his release from jail. Additionally, according to Newsday and The New York Times, Caliendo is purportedly representing Braun in the most recent case as well. In an effort to obtain a statement from Caliendo regarding this article, Law & Crime reached out to them; but, they did not immediately respond at the time of publishing.
In the month of August 2024, Braun was taken into custody on suspicion of assaulting both his wife and her father, who was seventy years old. According to the authorities, both victims said that they had been punched in the face or head at some point in time, or both.
Braun is accused of throwing his wife off a bed and onto the floor on July 17, 2024, “causing her substantial pain and bruising her legs,” according to the lawsuit, which cites the lady as the party who filed the case. According to the complaint, the defendant allegedly threw his wife to the ground once more on August 12, 2024, and then hit her in the head. She allegedly informed the police that the punch caused her to experience “substantial pain,” disorientation, and “bruising.”
One count of petit larceny is the only charge that stays, as the most of the accusations that were brought against him during that arrest were eventually dismissed.
The larceny accusation is completely unrelated to the accused act of violence; rather, it is an allegation of scofflaw behaviour while the defendant was behind the vehicle. According to the allegations, Braun drove his white Lamborghini and black Ferrari across a bridge on Long Island without paying the tolls and without having license plates attached to either of the exotic vehicles. In comparison, those tolls and fines add up to approximately $160. This is a relatively tiny amount.
Braun was taken into custody once more on February 15, 2018. This time, he was charged with one count of allegedly forcibly touching the private areas of another individual. This event allegedly occurred at approximately 6:30 in the morning, when the defendant grabbed a nanny’s breast while rubbing himself on her bed, as stated in court records that were cited by Newsday and the Times.
On March 22, Braun was taken into custody for the third time, and he was charged with menacing in the second and third degrees. According to Newsday and the Times, this arrest is said to have been precipitated by a hospital visit that took place in January, during which the defendant allegedly argued with a nurse and then proceeded to swing an IV pole at her.
In addition, it has been reported by both newspapers that Braun made a threat against a fellow congregant at a synagogue in Lawrence after being ordered to remain quiet.
Do you have any idea who I am or what I am capable of doing to you? Braun was reported to have threatened the individual. “I am going to f— you up,” she said.
While Braun was living at home with his parents on Staten Island, federal authorities indicted him in 2010 for being one of the masterminds of a drug-smuggling operation that was successful in transiting one tonne of marijuana from Canada into New York by way of an Indian reserve. The operation was carried out while Braun was living with his parents.
The federal case moved at a pace that was almost excruciatingly slow.
After entering a guilty plea, Braun was given a sentence of ten years in prison in addition to three years that were to be served concurrently, which means simultaneously. Furthermore, despite the fact that he had been held in pretrial custody for more than five months, he did not go to federal prison until the beginning of January 2020. This was after a lengthy series of last-ditch efforts to get his sentence overturned.
A total of 143 pardons and commutations were granted by President Trump in January 2021, and a significant number of them were subjected to intense scrutiny. Braun’s commute was not an exception to this rule. In the aftermath of the event, the New York Times, CNN, and the Staten Island Advance published articles on the international drug smuggler who had a “history of violence and threatening people.” At the time of the incident, the individual was already facing other criminal claims.
In a civil lawsuit initiated by the Federal Trade Commission, Braun was also subject to a regulatory enforcement action that resulted in a fine of twenty million dollars for engaging in predatory lending practices. This action was taken after Braun was released from probation.
Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, has joined the complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission. The authorities in that case effectively accused Braun of acting as an enforcer for Richmond Companies, which charged exorbitant interest rates on loans to small firms. Braun was accused of doing this.
According to the allegations, Braun told a debtor and owner of a small business, “You have no idea what I’m going to do.” You will lose custody of your daughters if I do this.
He is believed to have threatened to beat and “publicly embarrass” a rabbi, as well as saying, “I am going to make you bleed.” This is one of the allegations that relate to him.
After Braun was released from jail, he made an effort to get back into the loan sector; however, he was ultimately prohibited from working in the industry by a judge from the state of New York as well as a judge from the federal government.
Additionally, the federal judge who is in charge of overseeing Braun’s supervised release, who has previously expressed some degree of trepidation regarding the defendant’s behaviour after being released from jail, has the ability to order Braun to serve a large amount of time back in jail.
Drug smuggler granted clemency by Trump arrested yet again.
