President Joe Biden and the "Democratic" National Committee have been caught once more throwing stones from their glass house after hypocritically attacking former President and 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee for using campaign donations to cover legal bills.
According to a report in Axios Friday morning, "President Biden used campaign donations to help pay his legal bills last year during the special counsel's probe into his handling of classified documents." To its credit, Axios noted that the legal bill 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."
No kidding. Just recently, the finance chair for Biden's re-election bid appeared on MSNBC and pledged "every single time" someone donates to Biden 2024, "we're going straight to talk to voters" and "not spending money on legal bills or hawking gold sneakers."
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
Yet, Biden used funds from the re-election effort to settle legal bills incurred during Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation of President Biden's improper handling of classified documents. The dissonance and hypocrisy are unsurprising on the legal payment front as Team Biden has attacked Hur's investigation as "politically motivated" despite politics being the driving force behind most of the Biden administration's actions (see also: persecution of Republicans, collusion with big tech to silence conservatives, recent abandonment of Israel, etc.).
The Axios scoop notes that the DNC forked over more than $1 million to Bob Bauer PLLC between July 2023 and February 2024, "the professional limited liability company for Biden's lead attorney, Bob Bauer" and used "largely for handling the special counsel probe, including bringing on veteran lawyer David Laufman" — the "former Justice Department official who previously oversaw the politically fraught probes into Hillary Clinton's email server and Russian interference in the 2016 election."
In addition, since July 2023, "the DNC increased its monthly payments to law firm Hemenway & Barnes from $15,000 to $100,000," according to Axios. "Special counsel Hur's final report, released in February, identified Jennifer Miller — who works at Hemenway & Barnes — as one of Biden's attorneys."
Despite finding the campaign cash payments, Axios said it remains "unclear how much of the increased payments were for Miller and her work on Biden's case and the expanded role the firm was taking in DNC work."
Unsurprisingly, the DNC "declined" to tell Axios "exactly how much money it spent on legal work related to Hur's probe."
Scoop: The DNC paid for Biden’s legal bills for the Hur probe, per 2 ppl familiar and FEC records.
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) April 12, 2024
The payments are at odds with some of the Biden team’s more recent attacks on Trump for using campaign cash for his legal bills.https://t.co/62jkANIlMV