Picture Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Each day Beast/Reuters/Division of Justice
Slightly-known lawyer in New York has lengthy been the thorn in Donald Trump’s facet, urgent deeper with each passing 12 months by taking down his scammy charity, blocking his presidential insurance policies, investigating his funds, grilling his aggravated son with questions, and at last indicting the previous president final month.
Matthew Colangelo, after years of relentlessly aggressive work, is lastly on Trump’s private radar—and that of his most combative MAGA allies, who’ve painted a goal on his again in current weeks.
Colangelo, who pursued Trump whereas on the New York Legal professional Normal’s Workplace, joined the Division of Justice after Trump’s exit from the White Home. He just lately left the DOJ to affix Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg’s staff of prosecutors pursuing prison fees towards Trump that threaten to model him the first-ever American president-turned-felon. And now he’ll be instrumental in prosecuting the DA’s case towards Trump.
As such, Colangelo faces the identical violent threats which have inundated the DA’s workplace ever because it determined to arrest Trump. However he’s being singled out.
Trump zeroed in on Colangelo in a Reality Social submit on Monday, April 3, breathlessly labeling him “a prime Democrat DOJ official.” Proper on cue, Home 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 engaged on an open prison investigation—present as much as testify and clarify “the circumstances and chain of occasions that led to your hiring” by the DA, respiration life into the conspiracy principle that President Joe Biden is behind the Trump indictment in New York Metropolis.
Media Issues has since documented how MAGA acolytes have gone right into a frenzy, with right-wing media darlings spreading that conspiracy with Colangelo because the proverbial lacking hyperlink.
The DA’s Workplace declined to make Colangelo out there for an interview for this story. Nevertheless, a detailed take a look at his twenty years of authorized work reveals a person who embodies a zeal for progressive civil rights and pushed Congress for honest housing costs for Blacks, a very pertinent level provided that he’s now prosecuting an actual property tycoon who as soon as engaged in unlawful housing discrimination towards African People—and routinely lied in regards to the values of his personal properties.
However Colangelo’s report additionally tells the story of a lawyer who in some way discovered himself on the epicenter of Trump’s authorized troubles from the second Trump sought the presidency.
“I had the chance to work with Matthew on the New York Legal professional Normal’s Workplace. He's a unbelievable lawyer, dedicated to serving the general public curiosity, and of the utmost integrity,” mentioned Jeffrey Novack, who fought alongside Colangelo in a authorized battle towards the Trump administration’s Securities and Alternate Fee.
Colangelo labored as a human rights researcher at an anti-apartheid group in South Africa and as a Boston administration guide earlier than attending Harvard Legislation College, based on a school announcement for a keynote speech he made there. He later served as a regulation clerk to then-Appellate Decide Sonia Sotomayor, who's now one of many few remaining liberal justices on the Supreme Court docket.
Colangelo then grew to become the director of “financial justice” on the NAACP’s authorized protection and academic fund, the place he took on discrimination instances. One specifically stands out, as a result of it introduced him earlier than a congressional subcommittee in 2009 the place he burdened the injury that unfair actual property costs could cause. In that case, an $11 billion post-Hurricane Katrina housing restoration program linked “housing help to the depressed values of black households’ pre-storm, segregated housing.”
After that, Colangelo spent seven years on the DOJ’s civil rights division, the place his staff managed to dam Texas in 2012 from implementing a voter ID regulation.
But it surely was solely after Trump received the presidency that Colangelo started to make his life hell. In late 2017, Colangelo grew to become the New York AG’s prime “social justice” lawyer—notably backfilling a task left by Alvin Bragg, his future boss on the Manhattan DA’s Workplace.
And that’s the place Colangelo promptly sank his tooth into Trump.
In June 2018, Colangelo’s staff sued to dismantle the enterprise govt’s charity, the Trump Basis, for being “little greater than a checkbook for funds” that appeared like a mere extension of his private enterprise. They ultimately received, after the AG’s attorneys proved that Trump illegally used his charity to fund then-Florida AG Pam Bondi. The charity was dissolved after a state choose discovered Trump had “breached his fiduciary obligation.”
However Colangelo quickly used his authority on the AG’s workplace to thwart the federal authorities’s arduous proper flip.
The Each day Beast reviewed hundreds of court docket paperwork that present the extent of Colangelo’s involvement in monumental constitutional challenges to Trump’s imaginative and prescient for America. Because the New York AG’s chief counsel for federal initiatives, Colangelo was concerned in 32 lawsuits starting from immigration and civil rights to well being care and state tax breaks. He challenged Trump’s makes an attempt to strip DACA authorized protections for younger, undocumented “dreamers” who have been dropped at the USA as youngsters—whereas concurrently combating to maintain Trump’s 2020 census from inquiring about an individual’s citizenship.
Certainly, Colangelo’s report in court docket reads like a completely separate indictment—towards Trump for almost each coverage conceivable. And it dates again to the previous president’s very first day on the White Home.
Trump signed a day-one govt order to kneecap the Reasonably priced Care Act by limiting client protections from an enormous chunk of the medical health insurance market, and in 2018 Colangelo led a multi-state lawsuit that cited his tweets and his acknowledged want to “let Obamacare explode.” It ended with a transparent victory when a federal choose halted the Trump administration.
When Trump’s Agriculture Division in 2018 instantly halved the quantity of entire grains college youngsters could be served at breakfast and eradicated a cap of salt, Colangelo in New York once more led the multi-state battle towards the Trump administration. A parallel lawsuit stopped the USDA in its tracks.
When Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric manifested in a brand new rule that may instantly contemplate a migrant’s use of Medicaid and meals stamps to find out whether or not they need to be allowed into the USA, Colangelo was New York’s top-named lawyer in a three-state lawsuit to dam it. The Biden administration ultimately dropped the coverage final 12 months.
Not each battle was victorious. When Trump’s pro-corporate Labor Division in 2019 undid an Obama coverage that required digital assortment of work-related harm knowledge, Colangelo represented New York as one among a number of states difficult that rule. However a federal choose ended up siding with the Labor Division’s capability to handle its personal affairs.
Nevertheless, it was towards the tip of the Trump administration that Colangelo moved from tackling Trump’s insurance policies to aiming at Trump himself.
In the summertime of 2020, Colangelo emerged as a key investigator probing the Trump Group’s enterprise practices. Months of regulation enforcement subpoenas and interviews had found what AG Letitia James would later name “important proof” of fraud: a decades-long sample of overvaluing Trump-branded properties to attain higher financial institution loans, most popular insurance coverage insurance policies, and larger tax breaks on donated land.
However within the closing months of the Trump administration, the president’s multi-billion-dollar firm was refusing to show over paperwork that Colangelo, and his fellow assistant attorneys common, had requested. So that they requested a New York state choose to intervene, and Justice Arthur F. Engoron compelled the corporate to reply. Briefly order, Engoron compelled one among Trump’s sons, Eric Trump, to point out up for a deposition.
Colangelo was the one who led the all-day digital name with Eric Trump on Oct. 5, 2020, grilling the household firm govt with questions on what he knew about his dad’s bogus-looking monetary statements, seemingly unverified property value determinations, and an enormous conservation easement for his or her forested property north of the town.
When the Trump son refused to reply primary questions—launching right into a minutes-long diatribe about how the AG had “weaponized her workplace to focus on my father”—Colangelo lower him off a number of instances.
“I can’t spend your complete day with this type of obstreperous reply,” Colangelo shot again.
The 48-page authorized memo Colangelo signed again then—detailing investigators’ curiosity specifically properties and the elder Trump’s monetary statements—served as a preview of the gargantuan $250 million lawsuit James ultimately filed 4 years later in search of to tear aside the Trump Group and bleed it dry.
However Colangelo wouldn’t see that by means of. On Biden’s first day in workplace, the incoming DOJ brass appointed Colangelo as appearing affiliate lawyer common overseeing a number of regulation enforcement divisions. And after almost two years in some of the coveted management positions within the authorized area, his former colleague Bragg satisfied Colangelo to affix him on the Manhattan DA—an workplace that had lengthy been engaged on a parallel prison case about Trump’s enterprise data in parallel to the one Colangelo did again on the New York AG’s workplace.
On April 4 in Manhattan prison court docket, Colangelo was sitting on the desk alongside two fellow prosecutors when the previous president sauntered to the protection desk. After years of battling Trump’s insurance policies, his firms, and his refusal to show over proof, Colangelo lastly had the person himself—earlier than a choose.