A member of special counsel Jack Smith's team met with a Biden administration official shortly before former President Donald Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents, according to White House visitor logs.
The meeting indicates a possible coordinated legal effort aimed at the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and President Joe Biden's likely opponent.
Smith indicted Trump in early June for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving office.
Nine weeks earlier, Jay Bratt, who joined Smith's team in November 2022, met with Caroline Saba, deputy chief of staff for the White House counsel’s office, White House visitor logs show.
The New York Post reported Bratt and Saba were joined in the March 31 meeting by Danielle Ray, an FBI agent in the Washington field office.
That was the third time the 63-year-old Bratt visited the Biden White House, according to the visitor logs.
He met with Saba in November 2021, when the National Archives was demanding that Trump return presidential records from his Mar-a-Lago estate before a formal investigation was opened, and in September 2021, when he met Katie Reilly, an adviser to the White House chief of staff’s office.
The optics of the special counsel’s team member meeting with White House officials during an active investigation about Biden’s likely 2024 opponent raises questions.
"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 New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a one-time top federal prosecutor in the Southern District, the Post reported.
Asked whether he believed the Biden and special counsel teams 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," Giuliani said, the Post reported.
Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University, said the March meeting was particularly troublesome.
"[It] raises obvious concerns about visits to the White House after [Bratt] began his work with the special counsel," Turley said, the Post reported.
"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."
Special counsel spokesman Peter Carr said Bratt visited the White House for a "case-related interview," the Post reported.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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