Bauer received $150,000 almost every month starting in July 2023, records show, while Hemenway & Barnes received $100,000. Both Bauer and the law firm have done other work for the DNC on a range of issues, including voter protection, and both will likely continue to do so. Given this, it is unclear whether all recent payments are related to the Hur investigation or whether the entire legal bill has been paid.
In recent weeks, some Biden allies have noted derisively that a significant portion of the money raised by the campaign of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, was going to his legal fees rather than his re-election efforts. While Biden’s legal fees are considerably lower than those Trump paid through campaign donations, the president’s use of political funds, which was first reported by Axios Friday morning, could counter some recent claims Biden surrogates.
“Every penny you give to the Biden-Harris re-election campaign, we spend talking to voters,” Rufus Gifford, campaign finance chairman, said this weekend during an interview on MSNBC. He later added: “We don’t spend money on legal fees. »
Kevin Munoz, a Biden campaign spokesman, said Gifford was referring only to Biden campaign spending and not to that of the DNC, a party entity that supports the president and jointly raises money with him but does not officially part of his campaign.
“If you are a local donor to our campaign, your money will reach voters. It’s that simple,” Munoz said. “This stands in stark contrast to Trump, who is begging American retirees and workers to pay his legal fees.”
The funds spent on Biden’s legal fees represent only a small fraction of the amount raised so far by the DNC this election cycle, unlike the Trump operation, where about a quarter of the money raised was used to pay legal costs.
Two of Trump’s committees, the Save America leadership PAC and the Make America Great Again PAC, spent $55.6 million on the former president’s legal bills in 2023. The Republican National Committee has not paid his bills legal so far this campaign cycle, but when he was president, the RNC paid lawyers to represent Trump as well as his son in investigations into his 2016 campaign and alleged ties to Russia.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, called Biden’s payments a sign of “lies and hypocrisy.”
“They have repeatedly stated that they are not spending money on Biden’s legal fees, while they attack President Trump for having to defend himself against Biden’s witch hunts,” Leavitt said. “Come to find out, the DNC paid millions to cover Biden’s legal fees.”
Democrats say the cases are not alike.
“There is no comparison,” said DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd. “The DNC is not spending a single cent of local donor money on legal fees, unlike Donald Trump, who actively solicits legal fees from his supporters and has dipped into every bank account he has put the hand like a personal piggy bank. .”
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