OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The Democratic National Committee forked over donor cash to pay President Joe Biden’s legal bills related to special counsel Robert Hur’s classified documents investigation, even though party members have complained that the Republican National Committee is covering some of former President Donald Trump’s mounting legal tab.
According to Axios, which was the first to report the hypocrisy, “Biden used campaign donations to help pay his legal bills last year during the special counsel’s probe into his handling of classified documents,” two sources confirmed to the outlet.
“The payments, made through the Democratic National Committee, are at odds with the Biden campaign’s recent attacks on Donald Trump for spending his campaign funds on legal fees,” the outlet noted further.
The DNC, which has collected the largest donations for Biden’s re-election campaign, paid over $1.5 million to lawyers or law firms representing Biden during the investigation, according to the committee’s financial reports.
The outlet added:
- In January 2023, special counsel Robert Hur began investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents after papers from Biden’s vice presidency were found at his office and home.
- From July 2023 to February 2024, the DNC paid $1.05 million to Bob Bauer PLLC — the professional limited liability company for Biden’s lead attorney, Bob Bauer.
- Those payments were largely for handling the special counsel probe, including bringing on veteran lawyer David Laufman. He’s a former Justice Department official who previously oversaw the politically fraught probes into Hillary Clinton’s email server and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign and its surrogates have been attacking the RNC for paying some of Trump’s legal bills.
Biden’s campaign’s finance chair said on MSNBC last weekend that “every single time you give to the campaign, we’re going straight to talk to voters…We are not spending money on legal bills or hawking gold sneakers,” a reference to Trump.
Also, a deputy campaign manager for Biden called a recent glitzy fundraiser for Trump “a handful of billionaires figuring out how to pay his legal bills.”
In response to Axios, DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd tried to make it sound as though there is a difference between with his organization and the RNC have done for their respective presidential candidates.
“There is no comparison — the DNC does not spend a single penny of grassroots donors’ money on legal bills — unlike Donald Trump, who actively solicits legal fees from his supporters and has drawn down every bank account he can get his hands on, like a personal piggy bank,” he said.
Axios did note that the RNC has spent many times more on Trump’s legal bills, but that’s because Trump has been under an unprecedented legal assault for nearly a year, beginning with the first-ever FBI raid on the home of an ex-president in August.
Trump told reporters on Thursday he would testify at his hush money trial in Manhattan if called upon to do so, which is slated to begin next week.
“I’m testifying, I’ll tell the truth,” Trump said, according to The Epoch Times. “I always tell the truth, and the truth is they have no case.”
During a previous press conference, President Trump stated his willingness to testify but also indicated his expectation that the trial would be postponed beyond the scheduled April 15 trial date. After three consecutive rejections from the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court to delay the trial pending appeals, the case is scheduled to proceed to trial on Monday, the outlet noted further.
Jury selection is set to commence on April 15. On April 12, the defense raised objections to the judge’s inquiries directed at potential jurors, seeking further exploration of those harboring negative perceptions of the presumptive Republican nominee.
“Jury selection is largely luck. It depends who you get. It’s very unfair that I’m having a trial there [in Manhattan],” Trump said.
