Trump indictment poses political headaches for Biden

President Biden is facing an unprecedented task with no easy solution — dealing with the federal indictment of former President Trump while fighting off unsubstantiated claims by the right that Biden is involved in his political opponent’s prosecution. 

A Fox News chyron deemed Biden a “wannabe dictator” during Trump’s speech Tuesday night following his arraignment. Trump himself decried Biden as a “corrupt sitting president” who, in tandem with the Justice Department, was targeting the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill have been constantly attacking the White House, accusing Biden of politicizing the Justice Department.

Biden and his aides have repeatedly stressed in recent days that they’ve had no contact with special counsel Jack Smith or Attorney General Merrick Garland about the Trump case. Biden has vowed throughout his presidency that he would restore a sense of independence to the Justice Department after Trump routinely weighed in on or called for investigations during his four years in the White House. 

Still, the White House must convince some skeptical Americans that the president is sticking to that pledge as leading Republicans paint the Justice Department’s indictment of Trump as a political maneuver against Biden’s top rival.

Biden was asked last week, hours before Trump was indicted, why Americans should have faith in the Justice Department.

“Because you’ll notice 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. I’m honest,” Biden responded.

But that doesn’t seem to be resonating with voters. An ABC News/Ipsos survey published Sunday found nearly half of those polled from a variety of political affiliations said they believe the charges against Trump are politically motivated. 

In a CBS News survey published the same day, 76 percent of likely Republican voters said they were most concerned about the indictment being driven by politics, compared to 12 percent who said they were concerned by the national security risks posed.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated this week that Biden “respects the rule of law” and “wants to make sure that we restore the integrity of the Department of Justice.” On Wednesday, she took a stab at Fox News for the “wannabe dictator” chyron.

“There are probably about 787 million things that I can say about this that was wrong about what we saw last night, but I don’t think I’m going to get into it,” she said, referring to the $787 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.

But otherwise, Biden, Jean-Pierre and other top officials have steadfastly avoided commenting on Trump’s case, allowing Republicans to fill the void with assertions that the charges are political in nature and Biden has a hand in them.

Asked specifically if she wanted to respond to Trump’s implication that Biden directed the DOJ to arrest him, Jean-Pierre flatly said she would not comment.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) was also mum during Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday, a notable strategy compared to the several press releases it sent during GOP presidential nominee Chris Christie’s CNN town hall the night prior.

Trump pleaded not guilty to charges on 37 counts following a Department of Justice indictment alleging he violated the Espionage Act by mishandling some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and obstructed justice in taking classified records from his presidency and then refusing to return them.

Unlike others in the White House, first lady Jill Biden opted to address Trump on the campaign trail this week, teeing others up to do the same when fundraising trips pick up in the coming days for Biden and Vice President Harris.

“My heart feels so broken by a lot of the headlines that we see on the news,” she said in a closed-door fundraiser in New York on Monday with an Associated Press reporter present. “Like I just saw, when I was on my plane, it said 61 percent 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 then alluded to the baggage that comes with electing Trump during a fundraising trip to the San Francisco area on Tuesday, framing the 2024 election as a choice between “corruption and chaos” under Trump or calm stability under her husband.

“We cannot go back to those dark days,” she said.

Meanwhile, Trump allies on Capitol Hill have rallied around him since he was indicted, spreading the narrative that the Justice Department is corrupted by politics.

“If the people in power can jail their political opponents at will, we don’t have a republic,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said last Thursday on Fox News.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called the indictment a “brazen weaponization” of the Justice Department and compared it to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

For some Biden allies, they trust that the president has followed his instincts on the issue. By refusing to comment on Trump’s case, he is instead further fulfilling his pledge to depoliticize the Justice Department.

“As he promised, Biden has steered clear of interfering with the attorney general. The chant of a weaponized Justice Department by Trump and his supporters is as hollow as it is deceitful,” said Biden ally and former Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.).

Ivan Zapien, a former DNC official, said Biden is sticking to his strategy from the 2020 campaign of staying out of the drama with his predecessor. 

“Part of Joe Biden’s winning brand in 2020 was that he was going to return governing to regular order, and he has done that — no need to change that,” Zapien said. “I think there will be serious PTSD in the suburbs across America, and Biden laying low and playing it by the book will remind people of one of the reasons they voted for him — as advertised, cool, calm and collected President Joe.”

That’s not keeping Trump from drumming up claims that the charges are “ridiculous” and that they are part of a witch hunt against him, often bringing up the current president as the person to blame for the situation he’s in.

Trump on Tuesday accused special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the investigation into him, of being an “uncontrolled Trump hater” and involved in “political hit jobs.” The former president has claimed since the indictment first dropped that he’s a victim and part of a scheme out of the Biden administration to take down his 2024 campaign for the White House. That has proved to be ironic to some political watchers.

“It really is fascinating to watch Trump try to politically inoculate himself from his many misdeeds,” said Carney, a senior policy adviser at Nossaman. “He’s one of the few presidents in our history who unabashedly proclaims to be the victim while perpetrating crimes.”