DA Bragg’s secret weapon may be a lawyer who’s dogged Trump for years
A little-known lawyer in New York has long been the thorn in Donald Trump’s side, pressing deeper with every passing year by taking down his scammy charity, blocking his presidential policies, investigating his finances, grilling his annoyed son with questions, and finally indicting the former president last month.
Matthew Colangelo, after years of relentlessly aggressive work, is finally on Trump’s personal radar—and that of his most combative MAGA allies, who’ve painted a target on his back in recent weeks.
Colangelo, who pursued Trump while at the New York Attorney General’s Office, joined the Department of Justice after Trump’s exit from the White House. He recently left the DOJ to join Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s team of prosecutors pursuing criminal charges against Trump that threaten to brand him the first-ever American president-turned-felon. And now he’ll be instrumental in prosecuting the DA’s case against Trump.
As such, Colangelo faces the same violent threats that have inundated the DA’s office ever since it decided to arrest Trump. But he’s being singled out.
Trump zeroed in on Colangelo in a Truth Social post on Monday, April 3, breathlessly labeling him “a top Democrat DOJ official.” Right on cue, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) fired off a letter to Colangelo later that week making an unprecedented request that the prosecutor—who’s actively working on an open criminal investigation—show up to testify and explain “the circumstances and chain of events that led to your hiring” by the DA, breathing life into the conspiracy theory that President Joe Biden is behind the Trump indictment in New York City.
Media Matters has since documented how MAGA acolytes have gone into a frenzy, with right-wing media darlings spreading that conspiracy with Colangelo as the proverbial missing link.
The DA’s Office declined to make Colangelo available for an interview for this story. However, a close look at his two decades of legal work reveals a man who embodies a zeal for progressive civil rights and pushed Congress for fair housing prices for Blacks, a particularly pertinent point given that he’s now prosecuting a real estate tycoon who once engaged in illegal housing discrimination against African Americans—and routinely lied about the values of his own properties. [Continue reading…]