A prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is facing significant criticism after successfully helping secure a felony conviction against former President Donald Trump this week.
Matthew Colangelo, previously the No. 3 official in the Biden administration’s Department of Justice, was one of several prosecutors recruited by District Attorney Alvin Bragg to charge Trump over a 2016 hush money payment.
Colangelo opened the historic trial by telling jurors that Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election; then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records repeatedly.”
In March, prior to Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order preventing Trump from discussing the prosecutors, Trump criticized Colangelo in comments to the media.
“Remember this. Colangelo was a DOJ guy. He’s a Biden DOJ guy,” Trump said. “Why is he in the Manhattan DA’s office trying the case? That in itself is a conflict.”
Bragg brought Colangelo from his high-ranking DOJ position in December 2022 to assist with white-collar prosecutions. While Colangelo had limited experience in that field, he possessed extensive knowledge about Trump.
Before his DOJ tenure, Colangelo worked for Attorney General Letitia James, who investigated Trump for three years before initiating a significant civil lawsuit against him and the Trump Organization in late 2022.
In James’s office, Colangelo participated in Trump’s civil case and led federal initiatives, including filing lawsuits against the Trump administration and investigating the Trump Foundation.
He also had a previous stint in the Obama administration, and records show the Democratic National Committee paid him twice for “political consulting” in 2018.
An individual involved with Trump’s legal proceedings described Colangelo as “exhibit A” of the alleged coordination between the Biden administration and Bragg’s office.
“I think the timeline is really important,” the source told the Truth Voices. “He’s in one of the premier legal posts in America, and he suddenly quits his job, goes to become a line prosecutor in the New York DA’s office, and then almost immediately thereafter, the zombie case comes back to life.”
Trump allies have focused on Colangelo to illustrate what they perceive as an overly politicized prosecution of Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
House Republicans, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), invited Bragg and Colangelo on Friday to testify publicly about the Trump case in June. It remains unclear whether they will accept the invitation, and Bragg’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Article III Project founder Mike Davis, a staunch Trump supporter, called Trump’s prosecution “rigged,” partly because of Colangelo’s involvement.
“You have … Matthew Colangelo getting deployed as a senior political appointee in the Biden Justice Department to resurrect the zombie case that the prior Manhattan DA, Cy Vance, the Manhattan U.S. attorney, the Federal Election Commission, Bragg himself declined to bring until they brought this case to directly interfere in the 2024 presidential election,” Davis said.
When Bragg took office in early 2022, he initially hesitated to continue his predecessor Cy Vance’s investigation of Trump. However, following months of public pressure and Colangelo’s hiring, Bragg charged Trump in April 2023. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Election Commission had previously declined to charge Trump over the hush money payment.
Many of Trump’s critics have disputed the claim that the prosecution was politically motivated. They note that falsifying business records charges are common in New York City and reiterate that prosecutors do not pursue cases they do not believe they can win.
Manhattan is the “financial capital of the world,” defense attorney Joey Jackson, a former employee of the Manhattan DA’s Office, told reporters on Friday.
Jackson stated the office has been “interested in white-collar crime since the beginning of time.”
“You can call this, as has been said, a Biden prosecution, a corrupt judge, a corrupt DA,” Jackson said. “This was about a crime that the DA office had a lot of interest in, and ultimately they pursued that interest and they got a guilty verdict, and I think that was a just and appropriate result.”
Colangelo did not respond to a request for comment.
