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Convicted drug dealer freed by Trump headed back to jail after string of alleged violent episodes: prosecutors
@Source: nypost.com
A convicted drug dealer freed by President Trump was sent back to jail Friday after being charged with injuring a 3-year-old child, groping his live-in nanny, and other violent episodes.
Jonathan Braun, 41, squandered his chance at freedom after breaking the terms of his supervised release with a slew of Nassau County arrests in recent weeks, Brooklyn federal prosecutors said.
Trump commuted Braun’s decade-long sentence for orchestrating a marijuana distribution ring on the last day of his first term in 2021.
But Braun, who took a picture with Trump at one of his Florida golf courses in 2022, has been nabbed several times since, including for allegedly punching a man during a Shabbat dinner Saturday night at his Nassau County home, court papers say.
He then shoved the man’s three-year-old to the ground, “causing a red mark on his back and substantial pain,” according to a criminal complaint.
The convicted marijuana distributor— whose family has ties to Trump ally Charles Kushner — also menaced a man praying at a synagogue, groped his nanny’s breast while he masturbated, and assaulted a hospital nurse in separate incidents in recent months, prosecutors say.
“Do you know who I am or what I can do to you?” he shouted at the congregant who had asked him to be quiet in a January incident, court papers allege.
Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto cited Braun’s alleged spree of “erratic” violent episodes and held him without bail Friday for breaching the terms of his supervised release.
“I am concerned about the nature of the offenses. People are getting hurt,” Matsumoto said at a hearing in Brooklyn federal court. She noted that she has seen photos of the injuries in at least one of the episodes.
“My concern is there are repeated instances of violence and showing lack of stability,” the jurist added.
Braun had posted bail in the Nassau County state cases. He was arrested again, however, by the U.S Marshals Service Friday morning at a Long Island hotel.
Wearing a beige hooded sweatshirt and not wearing handcuffs, Braun griped during Friday’s hearing about his court-appointed lawyer, flipped off reporters sitting in the gallery, and claimed he wanted to represent himself.
“I could have gone to law school myself but I chose not to,” he huffed, adding: “I’m very intelligent.”
Braun was busted in 2010 for orchestrating a large-scale marijuana distribution ring that smuggled millions of dollars worth of weed from Canada to be peddled into the Big Apple.
He took a plea deal and had served less than three years of a 10-year prison sentence when Trump freed him on Jan. 20, 2021, his last day in office.
The alleged violent groper has also headed sketchy finance firms that charged sky-high interest rates on loans made to small businesses — sometimes as high as 1,000% — often bullying or threatening customers with physical violence to collect on their debts, according to state authorities.
He’s continued to receive money from his parents even into his 40s, and last summer was arrested for removing the license plates from a white Lamborghini and black Ferrari convertible in order to evade $160 in EZPass tolls, prosecutors say.
“His parents have supported him and given him money. Until today he has enjoyed the fruits of financial support,” Judge Matsumoto said Friday.
Braun faces the possibility of years of prison on the alleged violations of his release terms, and will have a chance to make his case to be granted bail at an April 10 hearing.
— Additional reporting by Kyle Schnitzer.
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