The White House counsel’s office met with a senior adviser to special counsel Jack Smith just weeks before he filed charges against former President Trump for allegedly misappropriating classified documents, raising serious concerns about coordinated legal efforts targeting the likely opponent of President Biden in 2024.
Jay Bratt, who joined the special counsel team in November 2022 shortly after its formation, met at the White House on March 31, 2023 with Caroline Saba, deputy chief of staff in the White House Office of Counsel. , a visitor to the White House. show the records.
They were joined at 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 in the midst of negotiations with the National Archives, which were demanding the return of presidential records from his Mar-a-Lago property before that a formal investigation had not yet been launched. been opened.
Saba, who is not a lawyer, left the White House in May to attend law school.
Special counsel Jack Smith visited the White House during the Trump investigation.Getty Images
Jay Bratt, a top assistant to special counsel Jack Smith, met with the White House counsel’s office just weeks before Trump was indicted. Justice Department
Bratt had a third meeting at the White House in September 2021, this time with Katherine Reily, an adviser in the White House chief of staff’s office.
The records do not provide information about what was discussed at the meetings.
Critics and legal experts questioned why Bratt was meeting with the White House counsel’s office while he was part of an active investigation into President Biden’s likely Republican opponent in 2024.
“There is no legitimate purpose for a line [DOJ] “A guy who meets with the White House, except if he’s coordinated by the highest levels,” said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a former top US attorney in the Southern District.
Caroline Saba, deputy chief of staff for the White House counsel’s office, met with Jay Bratt at the White House, records show. Linkedin Caroline S.
Asked if he believed the White House and the special counsel were coordinating the prosecution of Trump, Giuliani said: “You’re absolutely right.”
“What is happening is that they have destroyed all the ethical norms that exist and have created a state police. She is a Biden state attorney and a Biden state police officer,” he continued.
The former mayor, who represented Trump during special counsel Robert Mueller’s 2018 investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, was indicted last week in Fulton County, Georgia, in connection with attempts to nullify the presidential election in 2020.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said the March meeting was particularly problematic and “raises obvious concerns about visits to the White House after [Bratt] He began his work with the special prosecutor.”
The White House meeting raises additional questions. AFP via Getty Images
“There is no reason why the Department of Justice cannot confirm whether this meeting was related to the ongoing investigation or concerns some other matter,” he said.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel, said Bratt was at the White House for a “case-related interview” but declined to comment further.
The FBI declined to comment.
A person with knowledge of the 2023 visit insisted that it was “an interview with a career official who was also working in the White House during the Trump Administration.”
Rudy Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, said the meetings suggested inappropriate conduct.AP
The same individual said the 2021 visits were “related to national security.”
Bratt, a Harvard-educated lawyer, has long worked at the Justice Department, serving as chief of its counterintelligence and export control section in the homeland security division since October 2018.
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The section focuses on investigating and prosecuting cases that affect the national security and foreign relations of the United States.
In this capacity, Bratt visited Mar-a-Lago in June 2022 to inspect the storage facilities on the property and personally interacted with Trump.
He later became a leading proponent of the FBI’s unannounced raid on the property in August of that year, the Washington Post reported.
Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Trump’s valet Walt Nauta, who has also been charged by the special counsel’s office, accused Bratt in June of trying to coerce his client’s cooperation by floating Woodward’s earlier request to be judge.
In a sealed filing obtained by The Guardian, Woodward alleged that Bratt raised his earlier court request to suggest that it might be viewed more favorably if his client cooperated with the government against Trump.
Bratt is not the only Justice Department connection to an indictment against Trump.
Another former Justice Department official, Matthew Colangelo, newly hired in December 2022 in the office of far-left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, also played a pivotal role in the New York City impeachment of Trump for alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. .
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Source: vtt.edu.vn