President Joe Biden let the veil slip during a Thursday stop in New Hampshire.
Biden told a small crowd “We gotta lock him up” during a screed on his nemesis Donald Trump, according to several reports.
The President had restrained himself from publicly endorsing jailing Trump for years.
Biden later collected himself and attempted to clean up the mess he created.
“Lock up him politically,” Biden said, reports Stephen Michael. “Lock him out, that’s what we have to do.”
Biden has denied White House involvement in the lawfare against Trump, which has continued after Biden was deposed atop the ticket for his Vice President Kamala Harris.
But in November 2022, after reports surfaced Trump would seek a return to the White House, Biden pledged to pursue measures beyond the ballot box to prevent Trump’s reelection.
During a November 9, 2022 press conference, Biden, when asked about the prospects of Trump running against him in 2024, said, “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].”
That sensational pledge preceded an eruption of extraordinary legal assaults on Trump, most vividly represented by a trio of events on a single date – November 18, 2022.
On that day, just over a week after Biden’s pledge and Trump subsequently entering the race, three events, two which took place behind closed doors, occurred – suggesting White House coordination.
Necessarily out in the open, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump on November 18.
But two other important developments took place that day behind the scenes. Matthew Colangelo – the former third-highest ranking official at the U.S. Department of Justice – resigned to take a position in the Manhattan prosecutor’s office. And Nathan Wade – the former Special Prosecutor for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis – met on official business for eight hours with the White House counsel’s office.
Wade’s only duty in Willis’s office was overseeing her prosecution of Trump.
Smith revived investigations into Trump, ultimately pursuing novel legal theories to do so. His prosecutions in Washington and Florida have hit roadblocks, with a federal judge in Florida dismissing his case against Trump for retaining classified documents.
Colangelo similarly revived Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s investigations into Trump, after Bragg reportedly struggled to find a prosecutable crime. Colangelo played a critical role in Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts – giving Biden and now the Harris campaign fodder they have used countless times on the stump. Yet that case has also hit roadblocks and may be overturned on appeal.
Wade was hired by Willis to handle the Trump case, although that case has hit numerous snags inside and outside the courtrooms. Wade was ordered to resign from the case by a Georgia judge after his sexual relationship with Willis came to light.
Among other prosecutions and lawsuits, Trump also faced efforts to remove him on the ballot on dubious Fourteenth Amendment grounds, although the Supreme Court halted those efforts.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.