Debunking Former President Trump’s Unfounded Claims Regarding His New York Legal Cases and the Involvement of President Biden
Former President Donald Trump made some unsubstantiated statements following significant developments in two of his New York legal cases on Monday. He spoke out after a judge set an April 15, 2023, date for the start of his Manhattan criminal trial on charges of falsifying business records related to a hush money scheme, and separately, an appeals court reduced the bond he must post after being found liable for civil fraud.
Trump alleged that “this is all Biden-run things” and that “these are all Biden trials.” Moreover, he claimed that Matthew Colangelo, a former senior Justice Department official now working for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, had been “put into” the district attorney’s office by President Joe Biden.
Facts First:
1. There is no basis for Trump’s claims that Biden has been involved in bringing or running any of the criminal or civil cases against him. The Manhattan prosecution is being led by Bragg, and the civil fraud case by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who are both elected officials that do not report to the president or the federal Justice Department.
2. Biden had no involvement in Colangelo’s decision to leave the federal Justice Department and join the district attorney’s office as senior counsel to Bragg in 2022. Colangelo and Bragg were acquainted before Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney.
3. James filed the lawsuit leading to Trump’s civil fraud trial in September 2022, well before Trump announced his 2024 campaign. The investigation began in 2019, long before Biden succeeded Trump as president. There is no evidence that Biden has had any role in bringing criminal charges against Trump in Manhattan or Fulton County, Georgia; these prosecutions have been led by elected local district attorneys.
4. Trump’s two federal indictments were brought by a special counsel, Jack Smith, who was appointed in November 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee. However, this does not prove that Biden was involved in the prosecution effort or that he ordered the indictments as Trump has previously claimed; Garland has stated that he would resign if asked to take action against Trump, but he is confident that such a situation will never occur.
5. It’s important to note that grand juries made up of ordinary citizens in New York, Georgia, Florida, and Washington, D.C., approved the indictments in each of Trump’s four criminal cases.
6. Trump has yet to provide any evidence for his repeated claims that Biden orchestrated Colangelo’s 2022 move from the Justice Department to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Colangelo and Bragg had previously worked together at the New York Attorney General’s Office, where Colangelo investigated Trump’s charity and financial practices and was involved in bringing various lawsuits against the Trump administration.
7. Colangelo served as acting associate attorney general in the first months of the Biden administration in early 2021 and then as principal deputy associate attorney general. He was never the top official there, unlike Trump’s previous claims.
