Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of former President Donald Trump on Tuesday matched what has become a familiar pattern: Trump is indicted on the same day as, or the day after, bad legal news emerges about President Joe Biden and his family.
It has happened four times:
- In April, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump on charges related to payments in 2016 to porn star Stormy Daniels on the same day that former Biden aide Kathy Chung testified at the House Oversight Committee that the White House version of events regarding Biden’s mishandling of classified documents was wrong. In particular, the documents were not kept in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center, and Biden’s attorneys had begun retrieving them in May 2022, not November 2022.
- In June, Smith indicted Trump in Miami for allegedly retaining White House documents, including classified documents, on the same day lawmakers revealed that Joe and Hunter Biden had received payments of $5 million each from the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The lawmakers had viewed a report, recorded on a form known as an FD-1023, in which bribes were described by a trusted FBI informant. The news was drowned out by the first, historic federal indictment of a former presidenet.
- Later the same month, Smith filed a superseding indictment in the “documents” case the day after Hunter Biden’s “sweetheart” plea bargain with federal prosecutors in Delaware fell apart in court. Under the agreement, Hunter Biden was to have accepted a guilty plea for two tax misdemeanors and a diversion program for a gun violation. But the judge questioned a provision that had shielded Hunter Biden from further prosecution of his financial dealings, in which President Biden may have been involved.
- On Tuesday, Smith filed his indictment against Trump relating to his attempts to contest the 2020 presidential election. The indictment came the day after former Hunter Biden business associate Devon Archer testified at the House Oversight Committee that Hunter Biden had put his father on the telephone with Hunter’s business associates; that Hunter Biden had been hired by Burisma to influence then-Vice President Joe Biden to stop a prosecutor; and that Hunter Biden had made money from China.
In addition, Tuesday morning’s headlines in a variety of outlets led with the news that polls were showing that Trump was not only likely to win the Republican presidential nomination, but could defeat President Biden in a rematch in November 2024.
The timing could be sheer coincidence, as the two investigations are running in parallel. However, the timing has made it much harder for Attorney General Merrick Garland to convince Americans that his department is not carrying out a political agenda.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.