A member of President Joe Biden’s legal team met with a key member of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team several weeks before the first charge against former President Donald Trump, according to the White House visitor records.
On March 31, Jay Bratt, Smith’s top aide, met with Caroline Saba, Deputy Chief of Staff for the White House Counsel’s Office. Jay Bratt joined the special counsel team in November 2022, not long after it was established. About nine weeks later, on June 8, Trump would be charged for the first time by Smith’s office.
Danielle Ray, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Washington field office, attended the 10 a.m. meeting with Bratt and Saba. What Bratt, Saba, and Ray discussed at their meeting is not revealed by the logs.
Also, Bratt held meetings in the White House before. The National Archives began negotiating with Trump for the repatriation of presidential records from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in November 2021, before an official inquiry had even been launched. At that time, Bratt met with Saba.
Prior to that, Bratt met with Katherine Reilley, a consultant for the White House chief of staff’s office, in September 2021. There is no information in the logs about the topic of this meeting.
The special counsel’s spokesperson, Peter Carr, said in a statement that Bratt’s most recent visit at the White House was for a “case-related interview,” but he refrained from making any additional comments.
According to a source with knowledge of the most current, Bratt’s meeting with Saba was “an interview of a career official who was also working at the White House during the Trump administration,” according to the New York Post. The travels in 2021, according to this source, will be “connected to national security.”
Legal experts have concerns about possible DOJ-White House collusion over Trump indictments
Why would a member of the Department of Justice’s special counsel’s team attend meetings at the White House counsel’s office while he is a part of an ongoing investigation into the leading Republican politician likely to compete with Biden in the 2024 election? is the question being asked by critics and legal experts.
“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 prosecutor and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who added that he believes the special counsel and the White House were coordinating on Trump’s prosecution.
“What’s happening is they have trashed every ethical rule that exists and they have created a police state,” said Giuliani. “It is a Biden state prosecutor and a Biden police state.”
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, noted that the meeting between Bratt and Saba has some particularly troublesome implications and “raises obvious concerns about visits to the White House after [Bratt] began his work with the special counsel.”
“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,” Turley added.
Even Trump criticized the White House for Bratt’s meeting with Saba, alleging that the Biden administration is colluding with prosecutors to imprison him.
“It has just been reported that aides to TRUMP prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, met with high officials at the White House just prior to these political SleazeBags [indicting] me OVER NOTHING,” wrote Trump on the social media platform Truth Social. “If this is so, which it is, that means that Biden and his Fascist Thugs knew and APPROVED of this Country dividing Form of Election Interference, despite their insisting that they ‘knew nothing.'”
SOURCES: BREITBART NEWS, NBC NEWS
backlink from wikipedia
September 4, 2023 at 12:09 am
nxibupblw udvfh dsydebf eome xgumgsmfaqckmot