Trump Trial Day 5: Matthew Colangelo, Ex-Biden Admin Official, Gives Prosecution's Opening Statement
Justice Department/screenshot
Matthew Colangelo, an ex-Biden Justice Department official, delivered the prosecution's opening statement on Monday in the Trump criminal trial.
Democrat New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office recently hired Colangelo, a former senior DOJ official, who spent years targeting Trump at his previous job, the Washington Examiner reported:
Bragg did not hire Colangelo for his white-collar prosecutorial experience, which was lacking at the time he joined Bragg’s office. Rather, Bragg valued Colangelo’s “broad knowledge” of the Trump Organization, according to a New York Times report published at the end of 2022, during the same time frame that Bragg was seeking to ramp up his prosecution efforts against Trump.
Before his most recent stint at the DOJ, Colangelo had worked for Attorney General Letitia James, who investigated Trump for three years before bringing a massive civil lawsuit against Trump and the Trump Organization in the fall of 2022.
During his time in James’s office, Colangelo was involved in Trump’s civil case and also led federal initiatives, which involved, at the time, filing lawsuits against the Trump administration, as well as investigating the Trump Foundation.
“This is a witch hunt and it's a shame and it comes out of Washington,” former President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday. “It's in coordination with Washington, everything, including the DA's office, it's in coordination with Washington.”
“I just want people to understand that this is done for purposes of hurting the opponent of the worst president in the history of our country,” he added.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump March 5, 2024 (Evan Vucci, File/AP)
Colangelo's history in the Democrat party runs deep. He worked in the Obama administration as a senior Labor Department official and found his way into Biden's DOJ, appointed as acting associate attorney general when Biden took office. In that position, as the third highest-ranking official at the department, Colangelo oversaw the Civil, Civil Rights, Antitrust, and Tax divisions, among others.
When Colangelo left the DOJ to help Bragg, Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland praised his “wise counsel and excellent judgment” since his first day in the office.
More of Colangelo's opening statement against Trump is here.
Only about one-third of American adults believe Trump did something illegal regarding the case, an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found Tuesday.
The case is New York v. Trump, No. 71543-23, in the New York Supreme Court for New York County.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
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