WASHINGTON – It’s rare for the leader of the free world to be rendered silent, but President Joe Biden is clearly determined to say as little as possible about his predecessor Donald Trump’s federal indictment.
Biden's White House dodges questions about the matter. His campaign doesn’t respond to them. And Biden himself wants nothing to do with it. “I have no comment on what happened,” he told reporters Friday while in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
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The reticence reflects the precarious and unprecedented situation in which Biden finds himself: Just as Trump is the first former president to be charged by the federal government, Biden is the first incumbent to have his own administration indict his chief political rival.
While hardly unforeseen, Trump’s indictment brought a fresh round of reminders throughout Biden world that the president does not want to be drawn into the drama with commentary of any sort. He's wary of providing fodder for Trump and his allies’ efforts to portray the Justice Department as engaged in a politically motivated prosecution.
Eric Dezenhall, a longtime crisis communications consultant, said Biden’s cautious path was prudent.
“There are certain positions you take not because they are persuasive but because they do the least damage,” he said. “Any syllable Biden or the White House team utters will be used in court and politically to validate the witch hunt narrative.”
Biden, who made restoring the independence of the Justice Department a central campaign promise in 2020, now aims to reinforce that principle as both a matter of politics and policy.
“I have never once — not one single time — suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do, relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge,” Biden said Thursday. “I’m honest.”
Later that evening, the White House said, the president learned of the 37 felony counts filed against Trump by a Miami grand jury through news coverage of Trump’s announcement that he’d been summoned to surrender on Tuesday.
Asked Friday whether he had spoken to Attorney General Merrick Garland about the case, Biden replied curtly.
“I have not spoken to him at all,” he told reporters. “I’m not going to speak to him.”
Further complicating matters for Biden is that he faces his own special counsel probe into classified documents discovered at his home and former office. The circumstances were markedly different: Unlike Trump, Biden voluntarily returned the documents to the federal government.
Meanwhile, the president’s son, Hunter, faces an ongoing Justice Department probe into his finances and the purchase of a firearm while under the influence of illegal substances.
Republicans defending Trump have already sought to accuse Biden of directing the prosecution, and they're alleging a double standard in how the Justice Department brings cases.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy calls the Trump indictment a “grave injustice” and has pledged that House Republicans “will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”
The idea that the case has a political slant rings true to nearly half of Americans.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted over the weekend found that 47% of adults believe the charges in the documents case are politically motivated, compared with 37% who say they are not. Still, Americans are also more likely to say Trump should be charged than that he should not, 48% to 35%. Most Republicans said he should not be charged, and 80% of them believe the charges are politically motivated.
The White House is pushing back against the idea of any political meddling in the prosecution. Aides steadfastly continued to not comment on the case when pressed several times on Monday.
“What I can say — and you’ve heard us say this over and over again — this is a president that respects the rule of law. This is a president that wants to make sure ... that the Department of Justice is truly independent,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday. “He said that during the campaign he's restoring certainly the integrity of the Department of Justice. That is something that is important to this president.”
Privately, Biden aides express some satisfaction at Trump’s predicament — and some wish they were free to pile on in highlighting Trump’s alleged crimes and Republicans’ rush to defend him to voters. There's also frustration that Trump will again steal the national spotlight and a desire to ensure Biden doesn’t get sucked into the maelstrom.
Speaking at a fundraiser Monday evening in New York, first lady Jill Biden ventured where her husband has not, criticizing Republicans for standing by Trump in the face of the indictment.
“My heart feels so broken by a lot of the headlines that we see on the news," she told donors. "Like I just saw, when I was on my plane, it said 61% of Republicans are going to vote, they would vote for Trump.”
“They don’t care about the indictment. So that’s a little shocking, I think,” she added.
Biden allies have been quietly told to keep a low profile on the matter, and to ensure they don't inadvertently say something that draws the president into the controversy.
Dezenhall compared the situation to when then-President Richard Nixon commented on the Charles Manson trial and sparked concerns that it would prevent the defendant from getting a fair trial.
“Imagine what would happen if a guy who already has the support of 40% of the country was thought to be suffering a similar fate,” the communications consultant added of Trump. “White Houses are very keen to this kind of thing.”
Said Dezenhall: “As devastating as this prosecution appears to Trump at the moment, we’ve been hearing ‘They got him now’ since 2015. I’m not so sure, and you can bet the smarter Dems aren’t so sure either.“
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AP Director of Public Opinion Research Emily Swanson in Washington and AP writer Michelle Price in New York contributed to this report.