CNN
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As former President Donald Trump entered an underground parking garage at the federal courthouse in Miami, his successor was 40 minutes away from a meeting about Ukraine’s nascent counteroffensive with NATO’s secretary general.
Outside the Oval Office windows, the sound check of a Juneteenth concert could be heard drifting from the South Lawn. The small TV screen behind President Joe Biden’s desk went blank.
As the story was unfolding in South Florida, the response at the White House was intentionally muted. A day earlier, some aides testified that they did not even know when Trump’s appearance was scheduled.
Biden aides have long been bracing for the possibility that Trump could be indicted in the special counsel’s investigation into the former president’s withholding of classified documents. After Biden was told of the indictment by members of his senior team late Thursday, there was no doubt what the strategy would be: to continue to say nothing publicly about the matter while allowing the contrast that a president offers to play out. focused on their public functions. outside
Biden himself doesn’t seem to want much to do with the Trump situation. While Trump was being prosecuted, he was meeting with the president of Uruguay behind closed doors.
Hours later, recalling his lengthy meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping to a group of US ambassadors, he seemed quick to recognize a joke that could be misconstrued.
“I turned in all my notes,” he said, quickly adding, “But that’s not a reference to the former president.”
Asked for comment on his predecessor’s arrest, the president shouted “No!” as he walked away.
It wasn’t the first time he had been questioned about the bomb allegation – he had refused to comment at least four times before – and he and his team acknowledge it probably won’t be the last.
Not saying anything, Biden aides acknowledge, will test a notoriously unreserved president as the legal saga drags on for months, if not longer. But if there’s one subject on which they believe they can maintain a degree of message discipline, it’s not getting into ongoing legal issues, this one in particular.
Biden’s advisers are all on the same page that any comment on the case risks giving Trump leverage to fuel his claims of political persecution. And Biden has told team members that Trump’s own interference in Justice Department affairs is why he ran for president in the first place.
Close White House allies have taken a similar stance, and Biden’s team has sent the implicit message that anyone associated with the president should avoid saying anything that could tie him to the case, according to people familiar with the matter. .
The one exception came on Monday, when first lady Dr. Jill Biden went further than any White House official had gone when she commented on the situation during a fundraiser in New York City.
“My heart is so broken by so many of the headlines we see in the news,” she said during the event off-camera, according to comments reported by the Associated Press and confirmed to CNN by someone in attendance. “As I just saw, when I was on my plane, I was saying 61% of Republicans are going to vote, they’re going to vote for Trump.”
“They don’t care about the indictment. So I think it’s kind of shocking,” he continued.
The Biden campaign has been mute on the issue, wary of any outbursts of politicization that could lend credence to Trump’s claim that Biden is influencing the investigation. Not only has his campaign declined to comment on the matter, but neither the Democratic National Committee nor the Biden campaign have attempted to fundraise from the indictment.
Normally, such a detailed and damning indictment of a presidential candidate’s most likely general election opponent would be seen as a political goldmine, reminding the president’s supporters of the election’s stakes and boosting donations to his campaign
Some Biden advisers say privately they would love to discuss the indictment, believing the findings only highlight the former president’s continued risk to the country.
But Biden’s political aides have determined that the risks of commenting outweigh the rewards, believing that using Trump’s impeachment for political gain would only fuel Republican efforts to present the impeachment as politically motivated, rather than the action of an independent Department of Justice.
Even privately, Biden aides are loathe to comment too directly on the allegations against the former president, wary of how it might be interpreted and ultimately used to vindicate Trump’s grievances.
One factor complicating Biden’s approach: the special counsel’s separate investigation into his own handling of classified documents. The cases vary widely, and people familiar with the matter said the investigation into Biden appears far from concluded.
Biden’s re-election strategy, in many ways, boils down to a choice his supporters have framed as chaos versus stability, and the second of four impeachments potentially coming this year, illustrated with photos of a visibly disorganized approach to national security documents and strengthened by Trump. cheeky comments, it’s the kind of chaos they want to contrast with Biden’s consistent avoidance of any public comment.
In mainstream Democratic circles, the feeling is that the accusation, and the fallout, are damning enough on their own: any attempt to embellish or spin would be extraneous at best, counterproductive at worst. There haven’t been many coordinating phone calls or meetings with Biden aides because there hasn’t been much to coordinate.
“Trump’s indictment and the facts that will continue to emerge from the legal process speak for themselves,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN in an interview in his Capitol office on Monday.
With Biden aides continuing to see Trump as his most likely Republican opponent next year, top Democratic operatives have been marking the Republican response, both with supportive quotes and in all the officials who have avoided saying anything.
Coupled with polls showing that Trump’s support has increased among primary voters in the days since the impeachment, they believe the situation shows the strong hold Trump and Trumpism still have on the GOP, with they reckon it will be a big weight. Republican opportunities in 2024.
Some on Biden’s team also anticipate that Trump will be quick to take advantage of any comments from Biden for his own fundraising purposes, another reason for the president to remain silent.
The Biden campaign may not need to send public messages or fundraise from Trump’s alleged criminal conduct to reap some political benefits. News of Trump’s conduct and his response to it is making waves, serving as a powerful reminder to voters of the chaos that voted them out of office in favor of Biden’s perceived steady hand.
Aides know that Biden’s mandatory, back-and-forth stops at community colleges, union halls and construction sites likely won’t generate the same level of headlines as Trump’s legal jeopardy.
However, perhaps more than the achievements themselves, Biden hopes to project an air of competence and authority as a contrast to the chaos that has accompanied Trump for years. Boredom by comparison, in the opinion of his advisers, will benefit him in the end.
“Regardless of who the president is, it’s always appropriate for the White House to hold back or not comment on ongoing legal matters, and especially given that we’re at such an uncharted historic moment in our nation’s history, it’s even more important and appropriate. that the White House is being diligent not to comment,” said Democratic strategist and CNN commentator Karen Finney. “There is nothing to be gained by considering and serving our highest standards of justice and equal treatment under the law, it is even more imperative.”
In the past, some inside the White House, including Biden himself, have expressed private frustrations with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s deliberative pace in conducting investigations into Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. There is no indication that anyone inside the White House made these views known directly to Garland.
On Thursday, there was no notice from Garland to Biden’s top team that there was an impeachment, officials said, leaving the West Wing to find out by watching the news. Biden told reporters he had not spoken to Garland about the matter.
Biden appeared prepared when questioned closely about the allegation while touring North Carolina’s Nash Community College: “I have no comment,” he said before watching a student operate a yellow robotic arm.
Later, when the indictment itself was revealed, Biden was on stage trying to promote his job-training agenda against a backdrop of beige machinery and hoses. He learned of the unsealing after he finished his remarks.
Aides said he caught some television coverage of the impeachment throughout the day. But much of his Friday was consumed by meeting with military families, including for more than an hour in private before returning to Washington.
And by the time Air Force One returned from North Carolina on Friday night, aides had switched from the news, where Trump’s impeachment was ubiquitous, to the Golf Channel.
