Democratic National Committee paid lawyers who represented Biden in special counsel probe

By Arlette Saenz, Fredreka Schouten and David Wright, CNN

(CNN) — The Democratic National Committee has paid law firms that represented Joe Biden in the special counsel probe into his handling of classified documents, federal records show, even as the president’s aides have lambasted Donald Trump for directing donors’ money to help pay his mounting legal fees.

The DNC has paid $1.05 million to the professional limited liability company for Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer since July, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Bauer has represented Biden in the probe by special counsel Robert Hur.

The national party also paid nearly $905,000 to the firm Hemenway & Barnes since the start of 2023. Hemenway & Barnes attorney Jennifer Miller was identified in Hur’s final report as a “personal counsel” for the president. The DNC has paid the firm for legal work dating back to 2020, but the payments to Hemenway & Barnes grew larger last year.

The party’s payments to lawyers representing Biden, first reported by Axios, do not approach the tens of millions of dollars in donor money that Trump’s political operation has directed to his growing legal bills in recent years.

A DNC official on Friday declined to detail how much of the party’s expenditures focused on the Hur investigation but sought to draw a distinction between the legal spending on behalf of Biden and Trump’s pattern of spending.

“There is no comparison,” DNC spokesman Alex Floyd said. “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.”

Bauer and his spokesperson did not immediately respond to CNN’s inquiry, nor did Miller and others at Hemenway & Barnes.

In his report, Hur concluded that Biden had willfully retained classified information, but he declined to pursue criminal charges.

The Biden campaign has excoriated Trump’s use of donor money to pay his legal fees. In a recent statement, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez cast the former president’s campaign as a “cash-strapped operation that is funneling the limited and billionaire-reliant funds it has to pay off his various legal fees.”

On the stump and in fundraising appeals, Trump has repeatedly cast the criminal and civil cases he faces as part of a political “witch hunt” targeting him and has urged his backers to rally to his defense with financial support.

For much of the past year, 10% of the money Trump’s campaign collected from contributors was routed to a leadership PAC, called Save America, that has helped underwrite legal expenses for him and his allies. Save America has also clawed back tens of millions of dollars from an aligned super PAC to help with the legal expenses.

Trump faces 88 criminal charges in four separate indictments. He has pleaded not guilty in all the cases. The first criminal trial, related to allegations about hush money payments during the 2016 campaign, is slated to open Monday in New York.

The Republican National Committee paid law firms representing Trump in various investigation before ending the practice in late 2022 once he officially became a candidate for the presidency again.

Save America, which Trump established after leaving office, has spent more than $72.5 million on legal expenses since January 1, 2021, federal election records show.

Although the former president exerts control over the RNC as his party’s presumptive nominee, the Trump campaign has insisted that the national party would not shoulder the costs of his legal expenses moving forward.

But a new joint fundraising agreement between the Trump campaign and the RNC and dozens of state committees prioritizes donations to Save America – by directing a portion of the money raised to the leadership PAC before any money goes to the national party, according to an invitation to recent high-dollar fundraiser.

That means wealthy donors who are writing six-figure checks to the Trump 47 Committee, as the joint fundraising committee is known, will continue to help pay Trump lawyers.

His aides have defended the arrangement.

“The Trump campaign, the RNC, and state GOP parties ultimately receive the overwhelming majority of funds raised through the Trump 47 Committee,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the campaign, said. He added that that less than 1% of an individual donor’s maximum contribution would benefit Save America.

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