New reporting indicates that Joe Biden’s White House counsel’s office met with a top aide to Biden henchman and Special Counsel Jack Smith weeks before Trump was indicted.
Here’s more on this via the New York Post:
The White House counsel’s office met with a top aide to Special Counsel Jack Smith just weeks before he brought charges against former President Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents — raising serious concerns about coordinated legal efforts aimed at President Biden’s likely opponent in 2024.
Jay Bratt, who joined the special counsel team in November 2022, shortly after it was formed, took a meeting in the White House on March 31, 2023, with Caroline Saba, deputy chief of staff for the White House counsel’s office, White House visitor logs show.
They were joined in the 10 a.m. meeting by Danielle Ray, an FBI agent in the Washington field office.
Nine weeks later, Trump was indicted by Smith’s office on June 8, 2023.
Bratt, 63, also met with Saba at the White House in November 2021, when Trump was mired in negotiations with the National Archives, who were demanding the return of presidential records from his Mar-a-Lago estate before a formal investigation had not yet been opened.
Saba, who is not an attorney, left the White House in May to attend law school.
Bratt had a third meeting in the White House in September 2021, this time with Katherine Reily, an advisor to the White House chief of staff’s office.
The logs offer no information about what was discussed at the meetings.
“You’re damn right I do.”
Critics and legal experts questioned why Bratt was taking meetings at all with the White House counsel’s office while part of an active investigation into President Biden’s likely 2024 Republican opponent.
“There is no legitimate purpose for a line [DOJ] guy to be meeting with the White House except if it’s coordinated by the highest levels,” said former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a one-time top federal prosecutor in the Southern District.
When asked if he believed the White House and special counsel were coordinating the prosecution of Trump, Giuliani said: “You’re damn right I do.”
“What’s happening is they have trashed every ethical rule that exists and they have created a state police. It is a Biden state prosecutor and a Biden state police,” he continued.
“The March meeting was particularly troublesome…”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said the March meeting was particularly troublesome and “raises obvious concerns about visits to the White House after [Bratt] began his work with the special counsel.”
“There is no reason why the Justice Department should not be able to confirm whether this meeting was related to the ongoing investigation or concerns some other matter,” he said.
The Special Counsel’s office claims the meeting was about a ‘case-related interview’ according to The Post, but that’s all they’d say. The FBI isn’t commenting.
The NY Post adds: “A person with knowledge of the 2023 visit insisted that it was “an interview of a career official who was also working at the White House during the Trump Administration.”” Yeah, I ain’t buying it. Even if it were true, Smith’s office easily could have met with Biden the many times he went to Delaware for the weekend. They claim there are no logs for presidential visits when he’s in Delaware.