The White House has quietly hired a senior attorney who worked on the Justice Department’s heavily scrutinized investigation into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, the Washington Examiner confirmed.
Sophia Brill, a former top lawyer for Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) who went on to be senior counsel in the National Security Division in President Joe Biden’s DOJ in 2021, took a role as associate counsel at the White House in April. Brill’s “portfolio does not involve any matters” related to DOJ special counsel Jack Smith’s Trump inquiry, and she “works on civil rights issues,” White House spokesman Ian Sams told the Washington Examiner.
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“Sophia Brill is a Democrat operative who served as a political appointee to several Senate Democrats before joining Garland’s investigation against Trump,” Mike Davis, ex-chief counsel for nominations to then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and president of the Article III Project, a conservative judiciary group, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s very clear that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s investigation of Trump has been political from Day One.”
Smith’s special counsel investigation into Trump is “wrapping up,” and the DOJ may soon move toward an indictment of the former president, according to multiple reports. While Garland has the power to reject charging recommendations from his selected prosecutor, Smith’s decision will be “independent,” Garland said in November 2022 upon tapping Smith, who previously was a war crimes prosecutor and head of the department’s public integrity unit.
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Meanwhile, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) demanded on Tuesday that Garland turn over an unredacted version of the DOJ’s scope memo involving Smith’s investigation. He also asked the attorney general to provide a memo on special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents, which were found at Biden’s home and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a University of Pennsylvania-housed think tank, from November 2022 to January 2023.
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