The White House counsel’s office held a meeting with a top aide to Special Counsel Jack Smith and an FBI agent around two months before Smith charged former President Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents. 

Smith’s top aide, Jay Bratt, met with Caroline Seba, deputy chief of staff for the White House counsel’s office, on March 31, according to White House visitor logs, the New York Post reported. Danielle Ray, an FBI agent in the Washington, D.C., field office, also joined Bratt and Seba at the meeting. 

Trump was indicted on June 8 in the classified documents case that Smith was appointed to oversee as special counsel. The visitor logs don’t provide any information on what was discussed at the meeting between Smith’s aide, the White House counsel’s office, and the FBI, but former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said this looks like a coordinated prosecution of the former president, who is also Biden’s chief political rival. 

“There is no legitimate purpose for a line [DOJ] guy to be meeting with the White House except if it’s coordinated by the highest levels,” Giuliani said, according to the New York Post. 

“What’s happening is they have trashed every ethical rule that exists and they have created a state police. It is a Biden state prosecutor and a Biden state police,” the former New York City mayor added. 

Trump pleaded not guilty to 40 counts relating to his handling of classified documents that were seized during an FBI raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Bratt reportedly visited the estate in June 2022, two months before the raid, and interacted with Trump. Bratt then pushed for a warrant for the unannounced raid on Trump’s property, according to The Washington Post. According to the report, Bratt’s temper flared during the meeting when he told FBI agents that they could no longer trust the former president or his lawyers. 

Smith also indicted Trump on additional felony charges for his alleged role in seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election, pointing to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot as an “unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.” Smith was appointed special counsel in both the classified documents case and the 2020 election case by Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told the New York Post that the meeting between Bratt, the White House, and the FBI “raises obvious concerns about visits to the White House after [Bratt] began his work with the special counsel.”

“There is no reason why the Justice Department should not be able to confirm whether this meeting was related to the ongoing investigation or concerns some other matter,” Turley said. 

A spokesman for the special counsel told the Post that Bratt was at the White House “case-related interview,” and the FBI declined to comment on the meeting. 

In the third episode of his new YouTube series, “Facts,” Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro explained the history of fascism, detailing how most people who use the term today do not understand the origins or nature of the ideology.

The Daily Wire co-founder noted that the media missed the mark when it portrayed conservative political figures, like former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, as fascists, explaining that the fascist ideology centers around the idea of a strong centralized state, an idea popular among many American leftists.

“Fascism is characterized by a belief in the moral imperative of the centralized state. We can sense the roots of fascism going all the way back to Plato, who called for a philosopher king in a utopian state,” Shapiro said in the episode, which was released on Saturday.

Another characteristic of fascism is holding to a belief in nationalism, and sometimes a rigid racial hierarchy. This can be seen first in ancient Sparta and later in the scientific racism that was embraced toward the end of the 19th century.

“Such scientific racism became a dominant philosophy throughout much of the progressive world, which is why both Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were advocates of eugenics,” Shapiro said, adding that “fascism is militaristic.”

“It sees organization around military lines as a model for human existence and recommends action in the world as a response to existential nihilism,” Shapiro said.

Historically speaking, Shapiro said, the most important fascist figure would not be Adolph Hitler, but Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy from 1925-1943. Shapiro explained how Mussolini laid out “The Doctrine of Fascism,” which was predicated on making the will of the individual subservient to the state.

“Glorification of the state and the great leader lay at the root of the Mussolini regime. Mussolini quickly gained worldwide credence and approval. Fascism spread throughout Europe. Hitler greatly admired Mussolini, of course, and Hitler’s original Beer Hall Putsch was supposed to mimic the success of Mussolini’s March on Rome. Hitlerian fascism was significantly more totalitarian than Mussolini’s brand,” Shapiro said.

In the modern day, The Daily Wire host explained that corporatism, racial hierarchies, and militarism were all aspects of fascism. He added that fascism was typically used as an insult, and often shut down conversations on important topics like corporatism and individualism vs. collectivism.

“The truth is that nowadays, the term fascism tends to be a slur rather than a predicate to a useful conversation,” Shapiro said. “As it turns out, everybody you don’t like probably isn’t Hitler.”