Democratic donors paid more than $1 million in legal fees for Biden’s classified documents probe

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has paid more than one million to lawyers who represented United States President Joe Biden in the special counsel probe into his handling of classified documents, federal records showed.

This comes as Democrats, including those in the Biden administration, have previously lambasted former US President Donald Trump for using campaign funds to deal with his mounting legal fees.

What do the records show?

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The DNC has paid around $1.5 million to a law firm and the US president’s personal attorney Bob Bauer since July, according to the filings with the Federal Election Commission.

As Biden and Trump are headed for a rematch in the upcoming presidential elections in November, the incumbent president has repeatedly criticised his predecessor for using donor funds to pay his legal fees.

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The Republicans were quick to point at the financial records and call Democrats “corrupt” and hypocrites. “If these corrupt Democrats didn’t have HYPOCRISY, they’d have NOTHING!” the Republican National Committee said, in a post on X, on Friday (Apr 12).

However, the use of the party’s funds to cover Biden’s legal bills is not without precedent and falls within the bounds of campaign finance law.

The money for Biden’s legal team comes from the DNC’s legal account, which is primarily funded by major donors who have already met contribution limits, reported the Associated Press.

Since the beginning of last year, the DNC paid nearly $905,000 to the firm Hemenway & Barnes whose attorney, Jennifer Miller was identified in Hur’s final report as a “personal counsel” for the president.

It is also worth noting that while the national party had been paying the firm since 2020, the amount rose last year.

However, it is still far from the more than $100 million in donor money that the former president’s campaign has used to deal with his many legal woes as he faces 88 criminal charges in four separate indictments.

‘There’s no comparison’

The funds, according to the report by Axios, were used to pay lawyers or firms, including Bauber who represented Biden during the investigation by special counsel Robert Hur into his handling and retention of classified documents.

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The US president had come under fire last year when his attorneys first acknowledged that he had been in possession of classified documents from when he served as the vice president in the Barack Obama administration from 2009 to 2017.

However, speaking about Biden’s legal fees, DNC spokesman Alex Floyd, said “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,” he added.

(With inputs from agencies)