Matthew Colangelo Served as Political Consultant for DNC over Trump's Trial

The DNC paid Matthew Colangelo $12,000 in January 2018 for “political consulting,” Federal Election Commission filings show, and the prosecutor also donated $400 to Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008. (Photo via The Justice Department)

A Manhattan prosecutor who is managing the so-called “hush money” case against former United States President Donald Trump was previously a political strategist in 2018 for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and he once contributed to former Democrat President Barack Obama as well.

One would think this would be a clear conflict of interest.

According to Federal Election Commission records, the DNC paid Matthew Colangelo $12,000 in January 2018 for “political consulting,” and the prosecutor also gave $400 to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

In December 2022, Colangelo, who had previously held the position of third-ranking official in President Joe Biden’s Justice Department, joined the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as senior counsel in the case against Trump.

In March 2023, Bragg became the first of several prosecutors to indict the former president for allegedly interfering with the election. Bragg accused Trump of 34 felonies for reportedly fabricating corporate records pertaining to alleged “hush money.”

The six-figure payments were arranged by Michael Cohen, Trump’s now-disgruntled former lawyer, to conceal Trump’s alleged previous relationships with porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Colangelo claimed that Trump and Cohen were involved in a “criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election” during last month’s opening remarks, despite the fact that the lawsuit is not federal in nature and the Cohen payments were made after Trump took office.

Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who chairs the House Republican Conference, blasted the documents as more evidence that Trump is being prosecuted merely for political reasons.

“I just uncovered that the Far Left NYC prosecutor sent from Biden’s DOJ to arrest President Trump was PAID BY THE DNC,” Stefanik shared on X. “This is ILLEGAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE.”

Previously, Colangelo held roles as chief of staff at the Department of Labor, deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, and deputy director of the president’s National Economic Council during the Obama administration.

Along with then-DNC chair Tom Perez, Colangelo wrote an opinion piece in April 2017 criticizing Trump for undermining efforts to automatically enroll private-sector employees in local government retirement systems.

In April 2017, Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to the Supreme Court by Senate Republicans, who were accused of “blowing up two centuries of precedent” in the same piece.

Colangelo wrote a second opinion piece and led a Georgetown University discussion criticizing the Trump administration’s choice to roll back other Obama-era laws, such as the safeguards “against gender identity discrimination” by Title IX.

Since then, the Title IX rule has been reinstated by the Biden administration.

Following his tenure, Colangelo worked for the office of the New York State attorney general, contributing to an investigation into the Trump Foundation and joining a lawsuit against Trump’s Commerce Department, which opposed the inclusion of citizenship questions in the 2020 U.S. Census.

Before becoming the principal deputy associate attorney, he later began the position of acting associate attorney general under Biden for a brief period of time.

In December 2022, Bragg’s office made an announcement stating that Colangelo had been brought on board to manage “sensitive and high-profile white-collar investigations,” among other responsibilities.

Jim Jordan, the GOP chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, requested documents from Colangelo’s tenure at the Justice Department last week.

“Since last year, popularly elected prosecutors — who campaigned for office on the promise of prosecuting President Trump — engaged in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former President of the United States and current leading candidate for that office,” Jordan (R-Ohio) stated in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. ​​“That a former senior Biden Justice Department official is now leading the prosecution of President Biden’s chief political rival only adds to the perception that the Biden Justice Department is politicized and weaponized.”