Before the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith in November 2022, Joe Biden’s Department of Justice was in the process of conducting two separate criminal investigations into Donald Trump: his attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of sensitive government files.
Smith took over both matters to demonstrate the DOJ’s “independence” from politics, the public was told, although he took with him prosecutors and investigators already assigned to the existing inquiries. His team continues to insist their work is devoid of any influence from or cooperation with the Biden regime. Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland say the same.
But as Smith prepares for trial in Washington and southern Florida, defense attorneys have uncovered a stunning trove of evidence that contradict claims that the Biden White House had nothing to do with the unprecedented federal prosecution of a former president and Biden’s GOP rival in the 2024 general election. Emerging evidence also shows collaboration between White House officials and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office related to her RICO indictment against Trump and several associates.
According to a lengthy defense motion filed January 16 in the classified documents case in Florida, the “disturbing” collusion extended beyond Biden’s in-house lawyers and involved multiple government agencies dating back to January 2021. Those agencies include the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the National Security Council, the FBI’s Counterintelligence division, the intelligence community, the Secret Service, and the Department of Energy.
Defense attorneys representing Trump and his two co-defendants Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain 155 pages of communications between government officials, which are attached in heavily redacted form to the defense motion. (Judge Aileen Cannon, as customary, issued a protective order early in the case that required both sides to file sensitive materials under seal until she can determine whether to unseal them.)
“The FOIA releases, coupled with other evidence scattered throughout more than 1.2 million pages of discovery, reflect close participation in the investigation by NARA and Biden Administration components such as the White House Counsel’s Office, as well as senior officials at DOJ and FBI. These revelations are disturbing but not surprising,” the attorneys wrote.
Perhaps most disturbing, and not “surprising” but jaw-droppingly shocking, is it appears the DOJ has misrepresented the origins of the classified documents investigation. The DOJ claimed the FBI opened an investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified files in March 2022 only after the National Archives discovered papers with “classified markings” contained in 15 boxes of materials Trump turned over to the agency in January 2022.
But correspondence indicates that Biden’s White House Office of Records Management and NARA’s general counsel discussed what defense attorneys described as “exaggerated claims related to records handling under the [Presidential Records Act]” shortly after Biden took office.
One redacted passage seems to indicate that NARA drafted a criminal referral related to an alleged violation of the Presidential Records Act and notified Biden’s DOJ months before the archives received the 15 boxes and at the same time Trump’s representatives were working with the archives on which files to return.
A redacted portion of the motion referred to “Deputy White House Counsel Jonathan Su,” apparently in regard to Su’s communications with NARA’s general counsel in the fall of 2021. Another passage cited unknown actions taken by “the Biden administration” after an email exchange with NARA’s lawyer.
The paper trail also confirms that NARA communicated with Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, a longtime Obama loyalist appointed by Biden to essentially run the DOJ, before the criminal referral was officially transmitted by the NARA inspector general on February 9, 2022. “In January 2022, NARA communicated with White House Counsel and senior DOJ officials regarding the 15 Boxes, and then acted at the direction of those components by providing details to NARA-OIG, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, and the FBI,” the defense attorneys wrote.
One email shows NARA contacted Thomas Windom, an assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, one week before the referral was sent to the DOJ, asking to arrange a call to discuss the “Potential Destruction of Presidential Records.”
Windom is now Jack Smith’s lead prosecutor in the January 6/2020 election case.
Before the FBI reportedly opened the investigation, Biden White House officials were in constant communications with NARA. In a text sent to a colleague on February 28, 2022, William Bosanko, NARA’s chief operating officer, said “the 15 boxes from mar-a-lago (sic) had consummed (sic) all of our discussions” with the White House.
Defense attorneys also want records related to attempts by Biden’s Department of Energy, run by hyper-partisan Jennifer Granholm, the former Democratic governor of Michigan, to retroactively terminate Trump’s security clearance. A memo still under seal dated June 28, 2023 indicates the Energy Department “sought to ‘modif[y]’ the inconvenient truth that the agency possessed records showing that President Trump still maintained a security clearance,” defense attorneys wrote.
The memo was written three weeks after Smith indicted Trump for unlawfully retaining national defense information. “[Evidence] of post-presidential possession of a valid security clearance between 2021 and 2023 also supports potential arguments, which President Trump is entitled to explore based on existing evidence, concerning good-faith and non-criminal states of mind relating to possession of classified material.”
Defense attorneys also want records that explain the involvement of the intelligence community; Biden appointed Avril Haines, another Obama loyalist and close friend of Monaco’s—Haines, Monaco, and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice are often described as “Obama’s sisters”—the director of national intelligence in early 2021.
Haines and Monaco helped concoct the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax in 2016. Now Haines is overseeing the “classification review” of all documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.
While the Biden regime worked behind-the-scenes to initiate the classified documents case—after all, Biden appointee Merrick Garland personally approved the unprecedented FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, a decision that involved other political appointees—White House officials at the same time were collaborating with Willis’ ongoing investigation into the 2020 election.
Records show Nathan Wade, Willis’ alleged lover retained by her office and paid at least $640,000 for his work on the Trump prosecution team, met with Biden White House officials twice in 2022, including the same day Garland announced the special counsel appointment.
During a court hearing on Thursday in Fulton County for defendant Jeffrey Clark, a prosecutor further admitted that Willis’ office received two letters from the White House counsel. While the prosecutor claimed the correspondence pertained to “logistics and procedures” related to potential witnesses, Judge Scott McAbee sounded skeptical. He ordered the letters filed under seal so he can review in private.
Smith, for his part, also wants several documents to remain under wraps. Claiming the defense motion is “replete with mischaracterizations and baseless arguments.” Smith asked Judge Cannon to continue to seal key exhibits including the draft criminal referral composed in 2021; the identity of an agent from “FBI Headquarters” who attended the pre-raid meeting on August 1, 2022; and testimony that apparently refutes Smith’s allegations that Trump aides moved boxes to evade FBI detection. He asked for heavy redactions on at least two dozen other documents.
Cannon, unlike her judicial counterpart in Washington, is unlikely to consent to Smith’s every demand. She has unsealed filings that Smith sought to keep under seal and early in the process indicated her preference to make court documents public with special exceptions.
If Cannon permits the unsealing of most of the exhibits the defense filed, the Biden White House will have another major crisis on its hands. And Jack Smith will once again be exposed as nothing more than a partisan tool of the Democratic Party.
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Julie Kelly is an independent journalist covering the weaponization of the U.S. Government against her citizens, Follow Kelly on Twitter / X.
