A claim made by former President Donald Trump about collusion between President Joe Biden’s administration and Special Counsel Jack Smith to prosecute him has been contradicted by an NBC News source. The claim was based on a report from The New York Post, which suggested a connection between a pre-indictment meeting at the White House and Trump’s subsequent indictment on Espionage Act-related charges.
“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 Indicating [sic] me OVER NOTHING. “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.”
The New York Post’s report pointed to a meeting between senior Justice Department and special counsel official Jay Bratt and Caroline Saba, a staffer from the White House Counsel’s Office, on March 31, 2023. The report implied a link between this meeting and Trump’s indictment on June 8, 2023, insinuating collusion between Smith’s team and the Biden administration.
Trump seized on this report to accuse Smith of colluding with the Biden administration to indict him, suggesting that Biden and his team approved of this alleged interference in the legal process.
A source directly familiar with the meeting said Saba had facilitated a meeting between Bratt — a key investigator in the documents case — and a career White House official who was in the same position in the Trump administration, as well.
White House visitor logs recorded the meeting on March 31, but it is shown just as a meeting between Saba and Bratt.
According to the source, the White House Counsel’s office would attend such a meeting because it represents the institution of the White House and the employees under that umbrella, not just the president.
However, NBC News, through reporters Ryan Nobles and Dareh Gregorian, published a report that contradicted this narrative. According to an NBC News source directly familiar with the meeting, the purpose of the meeting was to facilitate questioning of a Trump-era White House Counsel’s Office staffer by an FBI agent named Danielle Ray. The source stated that Saba, the White House staffer mentioned, facilitated the meeting between Bratt and a career White House official who had held the same position during the Trump administration.
The unnamed witness, a former White House employee, was interviewed about events during the Trump years, and Saba’s presence during the meeting was deemed standard procedure to represent the White House institution and its employees.
