On April 15, 1876, fifty-one days after his acquittal in the Whiskey Ring trial, Babcock was indicted again, this time for involvement in the Safe Burglary Conspiracy. In 1874, Richard Harrington, an Assistant United States Attorney for Washington, DC attempted to frame Columbus Alexander, leader of the Memorialists, a reform organization critical of Shepherd's management of the city. Harrington hired dishonest Secret Service agents to break into the U.S. Attorney's safe, using explosives to make it obvious that a burglary had occurred. To entrap Alexander, the conspirators took materials that were supposedly stolen from the safe to his home at night, intending to give them to him and then later arrest him for their possession. Alexander thwarted this effort by refusing to answer the door. At that point, the Secret Service agents arrested two other conspirators who pretended to be the supposed burglars, and had them sign false affidavits implicating Alexander in the burglary. The conspiracy collapsed when the Secret Service agents admitted at Alexander's trial that the charges were false, and Alexander was acquitted. The conspiracy was alleged to have included Babcock as the liaison between Harrington and the Secret Service agents because Babcock wanted to silence Alexander, a prominent Grant administration critic. Babcock was exonerated of direct involvement. However, his continued ties to scandal and corruption turned public opinion against him, while he was viewed as a foe of Washington D.C. reform.