The Democratic National Committee has been paying President Joe Biden’s legal fees incurred in connection with special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into his handling of classified documents, according to sources and disclosures of expenditures filed by the party committee.
Since last year, the party committee has paid the law firm of Bob Bauer, the lead attorney representing Biden in Hur’s investigation more than $1 million — roughly $150,000 a month — from July 2023 through February 2024, the party committee’s most recent disclosures show.
Axios was the first to report on the DNC’s legal spending on behalf of Biden.
The DNC since last year has also paid roughly $905,000 to Hemenway & Barnes LLP, the law firm of Jennifer Miller, who is named as one of the attorneys that had represented Biden in the special counsel probe, disclosure filings show.
President Joe Biden participates in a discussion moderated by Stephen Colbert, host of CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, during a campaign fundraising event at Radio City Music Hall in New York, U.S., March 28, 2024.
Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Hemenway & Barnes LLP has long represented the DNC, well before Hur’s investigation began, so it’s unclear how much of the payment, if any, to the firm was for Biden’s legal fees. Since July last year, the same time the DNC began paying Bob Bauer PLLC, the party has increased its monthly payment to Hemenway & Barnes LLP from roughly $15,000 to $100,000.
Throughout last year, Bob Bauer PLLC and Hemenway & Barnes LLP were among the top law firms paid by the DNC, followed by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP and Perkins Coie, which have both represented the DNC in other matters for a long time.
The DNC said that the money they’ve paid for Biden’s legal purposes isn’t coming from their grassroots donors.
“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 to ABC News.
The Democratic Party providing financial support for Biden’s legal challenges comes amid their intense criticism of the Republican Party’s fundraising for and paying of former President Donald Trump’s mounting stack of legal bills over the years.
Just last week, the Biden campaign’s finance chair Rufus Gifford said on MSNBC that “every single dime that you give to the Biden-Harris reelection campaign, we spend talking to voters.”
“We are not spending money on legal bills,” Gifford said. “We are not hawking gold sneakers, or any of that stuff. The money that we are raising, we are going straight to voters.”
Ahead of a big-dollar Biden fundraiser with former Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton last month, Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz highlighted the support of their grassroots donors and contrasted it with Republicans’ fundraising lulls and need to pay for Trump’s legal bills.
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“When you look at the money that we are raising, which is overwhelmingly from grassroots donors… this is money going to voters, this is money going to voters in the battleground states. And when you look at what Trump is doing, that money, we don’t know where it’s going. It might be going to legal fees,” Munoz said.
Trump’s campaign accused the Democrats on Friday of being hypocritical in their critique of RNC contributions.
“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 campaign’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement provided to ABC News. “Come to find out, the DNC paid millions to cover Biden’s legal bills.”
Former Special Counsel Robert Hur testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on March 12, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, FILE
Trump has faced multiple investigations and legal battles throughout his presidency and after he left the White House, which has cost both his political operation and the Republican Party tens of millions of dollars more in legal bills.
Since Trump left the White House, his various fundraising committees and PACs, including his leadership PAC Save America, spent nearly $100 million in legal bills, including more than $50 million in just 2023 – with much of it going to legal bills related to Trump’s various court battles as he faces 88 criminal charges and multiple civil and criminal trials, disclosure reports show. Trump has denied wrongdoing in all of those cases.
Separately, during Trump’s presidency, the RNC has covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills on behalf of Donald Trump Jr. and other close allies of the former president amid investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election as well as Trump’s impeachment proceedings; and between 2021 and 2022, the RNC spent nearly $2 million in bills for Trump related to investigations in New York, according to disclosure reports.
The RNC stopped paying Trump’s legal bills after he announced his 2024 candidacy in late 2022 saying the move was intended to ensure impartiality as the GOP presidential primary played out – with much of the legal coverage moving over to Save America, disclosure reports show.
Earlier this year, as the Republican Party declared Trump its presumptive nominee and Trump’s team took over the RNC, the new leadership of the party insisted that the party committee will not pay any of his legal bills.
And while the RNC is no longer paying Trump’s legal bills, a part of its joint fundraising operation with the Trump campaign is dedicated to the Save America PAC, up to $5,000 of every donation going to Save America first before it goes to the RNC and 40 other state party committees that raise money with them.
Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law recently elected co-chair of the RNC, said last month that donors could opt-out of giving to the pot of money that goes to Trump’s legal bills if they want to.
“Anyone who does not want to contribute to that very small amount of money is able to opt out of that … [If you] don’t want that specific amount to go to Donald Trump’s legal bills, then you are very — you can very easily opt out of that,” she said, referring to how donors could also choose to donate directly to the RNC or to a different fundraising vehicle that doesn’t include Save America.