Despite criticizing former President Donald Trump for using campaign donations to help pay his massive legal bills, Democrats also used campaign funds to help President Joe Biden pay lawyers during the special counsel probe into his handling of classified documents, according to Axios.
The outlet reported on Friday that between July 2023 and February 2024, the Democratic National Committee paid over $1.5 million to lawyers or firms that represented Biden during the classified documents probe, according to the DNC’s financial filings. In recent days, the Biden campaign has slammed Trump for spending campaign donations on legal fees while claiming that “every single dime” given to the Biden-Harris campaign is spent on “talking to voters.”
“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
As it turns out, Democrats have also spent a significant amount of money covering the president during his own legal challenges. From July of last year through February 2024, the DNC paid just over $1 million to Bob Bauer PLLC, the professional limited liability company of Biden’s top Lawyer Bob Bauer. Additionally, beginning in July 2023, the DNC increased monthly payments to the Hemenway & Barnes law firm from $15,000 a month to $100,000 a month during special counsel Robert Hur’s probe into Biden.
The DNC did not reveal exactly how much it had spent on legal fees for Biden during Hur’s investigation, which ultimately resulted in no charges. Hur found that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials,” but did not suggest bringing any charges, in part, because a jury would view Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The Republican National Committee paid around $1.6 million to cover some of Trump’s legal fees in 2021 that stemmed from the civil business fraud case. At the time, a DNC spokeswoman told The New York Times, “If we were the RNC’s donors, we would certainly be asking questions.”
Biden’s legal fees pale in comparison to Trump’s $100 million in legal bills, not including the $175 million bond he recently posted in his New York civil business fraud case. As Trump faces the mounting fees, the Biden campaign has jumped out to an early fundraising lead, but a reported $50 million haul from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago fundraiser event last Saturday pushes him closer to the Biden campaign’s numbers.
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The president has poked fun at his rival’s legal fees, quipping last month, “Just the other day, a defeated-looking guy came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, I need your help. I’m being crushed with debt. I’m completely wiped out.’ I had to say, ‘Donald, I can’t help you.’”