As we previously reported, the news broke that the Biden administration had indicted former President Donald Trump for his alleged mishandling of classified documents mere hours after FBI Director Christopher Wray finally granted the House Oversight Committee access to the FD-1023 form detailing bribery allegations against Joe Biden by a longtime FBI informant.
The timing of these events raised suspicions and drew attention to a possible connection between the two. In fact, the timing was so suspicious that a reporter even asked the White House if there was any coordination between them and the Department of Justice — and the response only adds to the suspicion.
When asked if she could “comment on whether there was any kind of coordination between the DOJ and the White House on the indictment,” White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton gave a bizarre answer.
“We’re not going to comment on this,” she said. “I will tell you, though, that — and confirm as we’ve said overnight — that the president, senior staff, found out just like everybody else last night, no advance knowledge that this was coming, found out from news reports just like everybody else across America.”
Biden administration: “We’re not going to comment” on the “suspicious” timing of the Trump indictment and the Burisma FBI documents. pic.twitter.com/d32KbSwI5i
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 9, 2023
The most notable part of the response was that there was no explicit denial of coordination. The second was the claim that Biden “found out from news reports” that the indictment was happening.
We’ve heard this story before. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the same thing after the Mar-a-Lago raid.
“The President was not briefed, did not — was not aware of it. No. No one at the White House was given a heads up. No, that did not happen,” Jean-Pierre insisted. “Look, I’ll say this. You know, the President and the White House learned about this FBI search from public reports. We learned, just like the American public did yesterday, and we did not have advance notice of this activity.”
And that was a lie.
We found out months ago that the White House directly coordinated with the FBI to set up the raid. An investigation from a judicial watchdog group called America First Legal (AFL) found that the FBI gained access to records from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) through a “special access request” made by the Biden White House on behalf of the Department of Justice (DOJ). AFL’s findings not only establish the involvement of the White House in orchestrating the events surrounding former President Trump but also expose the National Archives for providing misleading information to Congress regarding the extent of the White House’s role in the raid.
Related: LOL! Even Chris Cuomo Says Trump Indictments Don’t Have ‘The Goods’
The “heard about it from the media” story is clearly a tell that the White House is lying. It’s an obvious one that we also heard regularly from the Obama administration when it tried to distance President Obama from his many scandals. With Fast & Furious, the IRS scandal, the AP spying scandal, and the VA waiting list scandal, the public was told that Obama learned about them from media reports.
After the Hillary Clinton email scandal broke, Obama claimed he found out “the same time everybody else learned it through news reports,” but evidence showed he had exchanged emails with Clinton through her private account. Considering that the Biden administration is full of Obama administration retreads, including Dalton, who worked for the Obama campaign and served as Department of Transportation press secretary during Obama’s first term, it’s no shock that the Biden administration has the same tell as the Obama administration when they are lying.