The Democratic National Committee used campaign funds to cover more than $1.5 million in legal costs incurred by President Biden during the investigation into his mishandling of classified documents — while attacking Donald Trump for using the same mechanism to pay his attorney fees, Federal Election Commission records reviewed by The Post show.
The sum was used to pay for lawyers and firms representing the president during special counsel Robert Hur’s 13-month investigation, which wrapped up in February. The payments were first reported by Axios.
On Feb. 8, Hur released a 388-page report in which he explained his decision not to pursue charges against the president, arguing that Biden would likely present himself at trial as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” making a conviction unlikely.
During the investigation, the DNC paid $1.05 million to Bob Bauer PLLC, the professional limited liability company belonging to top Biden attorney Bob Bauer, who is married to senior White House communications adviser Anita Dunn.
That money was partly used to bring on heavy-hitting lawyer David Laufman, a former Justice Department official who worked on the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state — as well as the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The DNC also paid upwards of $100,000 to Boston law firm Hemenway & Barnes, professional home to Biden attorney Jennifer Miller. It’s unclear how much of that money related to Miller’s work on the Biden documents case.
The DNC and the Biden 2024 campaign have vehemently attacked the presumptive GOP nominee for using campaign funds to cover his mounting legal expenses — and tapping grassroots donors to do so.
The Biden campaign has accused Trump of using a mega-fundraiser held in Palm Beach on April 6 to defray his attorney costs rather than focus on electioneering, claiming the former president is using “billionaire-reliant funds it has to pay off his various legal fees.”
“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,” Rufus Gifford, the Biden campaign’s finance chair, told MSNBC last week.
Given the past criticism of Trump’s use of campaign funds to cover his bills, the DNC debated whether it would be a good idea to do the same for Biden, Axios reported, citing a source familiar.
But Trump-affiliated groups have used a far larger share of funds to cover the 45th president’s legal expenses.
The 77-year-old’s team has used more than $50 million in political action committee funds, coming from the Save America and Make America Great Again Inc. PACs, to pay down legal bills related to four ongoing criminal cases against Trump.
The Republican National Committee has insisted Trump’s campaign has not asked for the official GOP to cover the former president’s legal bills, but the funding situation has gotten so dire in the past for Save America that it requested a $60 million refund this past summer of money it had siphoned off to MAGA Inc.
“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,” DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd said in a statement.
“While Donald Trump is beleaguered and broke as a consequence of his mounting legal troubles, President Biden is leading a campaign and Democratic Party that is opening offices in battleground states, recruiting thousands of volunteers, and making smart investments in the campaign infrastructure to win in November. ”
Trump’s team hit back at what it called the Biden campaign’s “hypocrisy.”
“Joe Biden and the Democrats’ entire campaign against President Trump is based upon lies and hypocrisy — they have repeatedly stated they don’t spend money on Biden’s legal bills while they attack President Trump for having to defend himself from Biden’s witch hunts,” Trump 2024 national spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to The Post.
“Come to find out, the DNC paid millions to cover Biden’s legal bills to a law firm run by the husband of top White House staffer Anita Dunn. Apparently ‘10% for the big guy’ from Hunter wasn’t enough for Crooked Joe to foot his own bill.”
