President Joe Biden’s third-highest-ranking Department of Justice official quit to join the Manhattan office investigating Donald Trump on November 18, 2022 – only three days after Trump announced his 2024 run and the same day Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith, and White House attorneys met for eight-hours with Nathan Wade.
The seismic timeline now revealed to begin with actions by White House officials on that single day – which revived and accelerated cases against Trump in Manhattan, Washington, Atlanta, and Florida – undermines the Biden White House’s denial of involvement in the lawfare against the former president.
Emerging details of that pivotal day, whose significance was first reported by Breitbart News, provides new credence to allegations by Trump and his allies that the former president has been politically targeted by weaponized government officials with White House coordination.
“This is a profoundly serious matter not only for legal scholars, but also equally important that everyday folks understand the threat to them – their lives, their families, their futures,” said former U.S. Ambassador Ken Blackwell, chairman of the Conservative Action Project and chairman of the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute. “If the Left succeeds in this, it will literally change our form of government forever.”
In the aftermath of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s successful conviction of Trump in May, Michael Colangelo’s unorthodox decision to abandon his high-profile role as Acting Associate Attorney General, one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in the country, to serve as an assistant prosecutor in Bragg’s office has emerged as perhaps the most consequential development of November 18.
Colangelo’s self-inflicted career kneecapping has drawn increasing scrutiny in the wake of Bragg’s conviction of Trump on 34 felony counts, an outcome considered unlikely before Colangelo’s departure from DOJ. The verdict has been widely panned across the political spectrum.
The former DOJ lawyer played a crucial role in rejuvenating Bragg’s stagnated investigations into Trump after arriving in Manhattan on December 5, 2022. The renewed focus on Trump that Colangelo sparked in Bragg’s office led to the office filing charges in April 2023.
Although Bragg had “campaigned as the best candidate to go after the former president” according to the New York Times, soon after taking office, he quietly began to dial back investigations into the former president – reportedly after struggling to find a prosecutable crime.
Mark Pomerantz, a special assistant on the Trump case, very publicly resigned from Bragg’s office in February 2022 out of frustration with Bragg’s reluctance to continue pursuing a case against Trump.
Colangelo’s arrival historically changed the trajectory of the investigation – which Trump has called a “zombie case” – despite Bragg’s apparent misgivings over making charges stick.
Colangelo’s role in orchestrating the case was so crucial, he presented opening arguments during the trial.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/112601603220228062
Trump is appealing the verdict.
Colangelo’s decision to take a lower profile job that enabled him to more directly target his boss’s top political opponent and 2024 rival is one of several remarkable political developments to emerge after the 2022 midterms – and one of three taking place on the same day.
As Breitbart News first reported, the three sparks of November 18 that grew into a lawfare inferno followed a November 9 press conference during which Biden, just three days after Trump publicly signaled his intent to run against the unpopular president, announced his clear intent to block Trump’s candidacy by measures other than the ballot box.
“We just have to demonstrate that he will not take power, if he does run, making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next president again [sic],” Biden said of Trump.
Wheels quickly began turning after Biden’s green light.
Trump formally announced his 2024 run on November 15, 2022. Three days later, on November 18, Colangelo submitted his notice, Garland appointed Smith to rejuvenate stalled investigations targeting Trump in Florida and Washington, and White House lawyers huddled all day with Wade, a key figure in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s prosecution of Trump.
For Trump’s allies and others, it is hard to swallow as a coincidence that those three events, so directly connected to the White House, could occur on the same day and so quickly after Biden’s pledge to block Trump without White House orchestration.
The Biden administration appears to be taking the offensive to combat the unmistakable appearance of White House coordination.
The day after Breitbart exposed the significance of November 18, the struggling Washington Post published an op-ed by Attorney General Merrick Garland writing off any criticisms of DOJ as politically motivated conspiracy theories.
The op-ed’s tenuous reasoning and department cheerleading was met with widespread condemnation from Trump’s allies.
“It’s not a ‘conspiracy theory’ to point out that the same day Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith, the White House hosted Nathan Wade and Matthew Colangelo left the number 3 spot at the DOJ for Alvin Bragg’s office,” Donald Trump Jr. posted on X in response to the op-ed. “They’re mad because no one is buying their bullshit anymore!”
As Trump Jr. suggests, Garland’s op-ed comes as media and Congressional investigations into Colangelo’s unorthodox shift in career trajectory are amplifying.
The House Judiciary Committee announced Tuesday it would hold a hearing on Thursday, June 13, examining Bragg’s prosecution of Trump. Also Tuesday, reports emerged that Bragg and Colangelo will testify before the committee on July 12 – one day after Trump’s sentencing hearing and two days before the Republican National Convention begins. And just this week, the House is debating whether to hold Garland in contempt for defying congressional subpoenas seeking audio recordings from special counsel Robert K. Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials.
Garland was defensive when asked about Colangelo in a June 4 DOJ oversight hearing in the House Judiciary Committee.
In his opening statement, Garland had listed what he characterized as conspiracy theories against DOJ, including “false claims that a jury verdict in a state trial brought by a local district attorney was somehow controlled by the Justice Department.”
He then disputed characterizations that he personally detailed Colangelo to Manhattan.
“I did not dispatch Matthew Colangelo,” Garland said, repeating “that is false.”
Asked how Colangelo wound up working for the Manhattan district attorney, Garland said, “I assume he … applied for a job there and got the job,” continuing that he “had nothing to do with it.”
DOJ sent a Tuesday letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) continuing the Biden administration’s denial of any coordination between itself and Bragg’s office that inadvertently exposed the hollowness of Garland’s denial of White House involvement in Colangelo’s dispatch to Manhattan.
The letter informed Jordan that DOJ officials had
…conducted a comprehensive search for email communications since January 20, 2021, through the date of the verdict, between any officials in Department leadership, including all political appointees in those offices, and the District Attorney’s office regarding any investigation or prosecution of the former President.
The search “included the email account of Matthew Colangelo, a former Department official about whom the Committee has raised numerous unfounded questions,” the DOJ letter said.
Unsurprisingly, DOJ’s limited search consisting strictly of official email correspondence found no evidence of a back-and-forth between DOJ and Bragg’s office, which, given its significance and possible illegality, is unlikely to have been conducted over official email.
Nonetheless, DOJ concluded “the conspiracy theory… is not only false, it is irresponsible.”
Yet by DOJ’s logic, in asserting that a search limited to official email communications proves Colangelo and DOJ never communicated with Bragg, Colangelo never would have communicated with Bragg’s office before beginning his employment there – a ridiculous assertion quickly earning ridicule.
Importantly, that letter from DOJ confirmed Colangelo’s DOJ departure date as December 2, 2022 – two weeks to the day after November 18, when Breitbart reported Colangelo would have given his two-week notice.
Colangelo’s role in the Manhattan prosecution of Trump remained unknown or under-appreciated by many in the establishment media even after the Manhattan jury reached a verdict.
On June 2, ABC host George Stephanopoulos fought with Trump attorney Will Scharf about Biden’s connection to the Manhattan case, seemingly unaware of Colangelo’s connection.
After Stephanopoulos vehemently denied any evidence of a Biden-Bragg connection, Scharf stunned the host by asking “how about the fact that Matthew Colangelo was standing over Alvin Bragg’s shoulder when he announced this verdict?”, quieting Stephanopoulos.
Scharf later put into perspective Colangelo’s departure from DOJ – where he was the third-highest-ranking DOJ official while the Senate considered the nomination of the associate attorney general, Vanita Gupta – to serve as an assistant at a local DA’s office.
“It’s the rough equivalent of like a four star General in the Army quitting his job and enlisting in the National Guard as a private,” Scharf said. “It’s that crazy a situation.”
Despite the resources, political and otherwise, poured into them, Bragg’s convictions may not lead to the victory Biden may have assumed.
The verdict unleashed a record flood of donations to Trump. Polling shows the Biden campaign and its media allies’ coordinated branding of Trump as a “convicted felon” is not working. And Trump continues leading in the polls in seven crucial swing states, as the coast-to-coast lawfare against Trump seemingly has validated Trump’s claims that the legal assaults against him are politically motivated.
Further, many legal experts predict the verdict will be overturned on appeal.
Other efforts springing from November 18 to block Trump are in far worse shape.
Smith, known for overaggressively pursuing his prosecutorial targets and often weaponizing loose interpretations of the law – his conviction of former Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA) was overturned unanimously 8-0 by the Supreme Court, has hit roadblocks in his Washington and Florida cases. Neither are likely to be decided before November’s elections. And the courts are weighing whether his appointment itself is legal.
And Willis’s Fulton County prosecution of Trump imploded after reports emerged of her relationship with Wade, who left the office in disgrace after details came to light. Willis herself might be removed from the case, which also appears unlikely to be decided before November.
Regardless, the consequences of November 18, 2022, which have cost Trump millions in legal fees, countless hours away from the campaign trail, and innumerable negative headlines from Biden’s loyal media parrots, will be unquestionably historic.
Despite building evidence otherwise, Biden continues denying any White House involvement. However, in a May 31 press conference after Trump’s conviction, Biden appeared to let the veil slip.
U.S. President Joe Biden pauses to react to a reporter’s question as he leaves the State Dining Room at the White House on May 31, 2024 in Washington, DC. Biden announced a proposed ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and also briefly spoke about former President Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in his hush-money trial in a New York court one day earlier. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“Donald Trump refers to himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What’s your response to that, sir?” a reporter asked Biden as he walked away from the podium.
Biden paused and turned to face reporters, enjoying a prolonged, wordless stare and flashing a knowing grin from ear to ear before slowly shuffling away.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.