The Democratic Party has redirected over $1 million in campaign funding to cover legal fees for President Joe Biden since mid-2023, despite criticizing the Republican Party for giving similar treatment to former President Donald Trump.
First reported by Axios on Friday, between July 2023 and February 2024, the Democratic National Committee paid roughly $1.05 million to lawyers representing President Biden during the special counsel probe into his alleged mishandling of classified documents. According to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s findings, while Biden did knowingly retain classified information, his appearance as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” would make it difficult to press charges.
During the course of the investigation, campaign funds were directed to Bob Bauer LLC, the professional limited liability company of Biden’s top Lawyer Bob Bauer. At the same time, existing payments to the law firm of Hemenway & Barnes increased from $15,000 a month to $100,000 a month. These combined costs covered a variety of expenses, including retaining veteran attorney David Laufman, a former DOJ official who oversaw the Clinton email probe and the Russian collusion investigation, to defend the president.
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The DNC did not disclose exactly how much was spent during the Hur investigation. However, the payments fly in the face of the party’s previous criticism of their Republican counterparts for doing the same thing for former President Trump.
As recently as last week, Biden campaign affiliates condemned the Republican Party’s decision to redirect donor funds to cover legal fees in Trump’s ongoing civil and criminal cases.
“Every single dime that you give to the Biden-Harris re-election campaign we spend talking to voters,” Biden Campaign Finance Chair Rufus Gifford told MSNBC last weekend. “What is [Trump] doing? He might put up some money tonight with his billionaire friends in a closed-door fundraiser in Palm Beach. We understand that,” Gifford continued, adding. “We are not spending money on legal bills. We are not hawking gold sneakers or any of that stuff. The money that we are raising, we are going straight to talking to voters.”
Biden-Harris Finance Chair @rufusgifford: Every single time you give to the campaign, we're going straight to talk to voters, with 100 offices open in swing states, hundreds of thousands of calls to voters. We are not spending money on legal bills or hawking gold sneakers pic.twitter.com/AY9qYtQ0L0
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 6, 2024
Related: 86% of Americans Think Biden is Too Old for Office After Special Counsel Report
In 2021, the Republican National Committee paid roughly $1.6 million to cover fees in Trump’s civil fraud case. As it currently stands, Biden’s legal expenses are dwarfed by the $100 million in pending fees Trump currently faces, not counting the $175 million bond payment he posted in New York.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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