(Axios) 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, according to two people familiar with the matter and an Axios review of campaign finance records.
Why it matters: The 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.
Driving the news: The DNC — which has been collecting the biggest donations to Biden’s re-election effort — paid more than $1.5 million to lawyers or firms representing Biden during the probe, according to the committee’s financial filings.
- In January 2023, special counsel Robert Hur began investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents after papers from Biden’s vice presidency were found at his office and home.
- From July 2023 to February 2024, the DNC paid $1.05 million to Bob Bauer PLLC — the professional limited liability company for Biden’s lead attorney, Bob Bauer.
- Those payments were largely for handling the special counsel probe, including bringing on veteran lawyer David Laufman. He’s a former Justice Department official who previously oversaw the politically fraught probes into Hillary Clinton’s email server and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Starting last July, the DNC increased its monthly payments to law firm Hemenway & Barnes from $15,000 to $100,000.
- Special counsel Hur’s final report, released in February, identified Jennifer Miller — who works at Hemenway & Barnes — as one of Biden’s attorneys.
- It’s 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.
- The DNC declined to say exactly how much money it spent on legal work related to Hur’s probe.
- Hur ultimately declined to pursue charges against Biden.
Zoom in: The Biden team increasingly has attacked Trump for using campaign donations to pay for his myriad legal fights.
- Last weekend, the Biden campaign’s finance chair said on MSNBC that “every single time you give to the campaign, we’re going straight to talk to voters…We are not spending money on legal bills or hawking gold sneakers,” a reference to Trump.
- A deputy campaign manager for Biden called a recent glitzy fundraiser for Trump “a handful of billionaires figuring out how to pay his legal bills.”
- Asked about Biden’s use of the DNC to pay his legal bills, DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd told Axios: “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.”
