A Politico report on Friday by Jonathan Lemire and Sam Stein suggested President Joe Biden is intentionally interfering in the 2024 presidential election by trying to force Attorney General Merrick Garland to move faster against his political opponent, former President Donald Trump.
Many Democrats deny the “lawfare” is politically motivated, while Republicans say it is intentional.
Politico stated the quiet part out loud: Biden pressured Garland to interfere in the election but the attorney general opposed the idea with “deliberate resistance” by indicting Trump in the classified documents case nearly three years after he left office, Lemire and Stein wrote:
Frustration within the White House at Garland has been growing steadily.
In recent weeks, President Biden has grumbled to aides and advisers that had Garland moved sooner in his investigation into former President Donald Trump’s election interference, a trial may already be underway or even have concluded, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private matters. That trial still could take place before the election and much of the delay is owed not to Garland but to deliberate resistance put up by the former president and his team.
The indictment’s delay is significant because Biden apparently wanted Trump convicted of alleged wrongdoing before the 2024 election.
In November 2022, Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate Trump. It is now unknown when the trial will begin. The court initially slated the trial for March 4, but the trial was removed from the public calendar in February, leaving Biden apparently frustrated and his aides furious.
Conservative pundits on X ripped Biden’s reported anger at Biden as “straight out of the Soviet Union” and “what it’s like to live in the Third World.”
“It’s obvious the multiple indictments against President Trump are part of the Democrats’ lawfare and election interference with President Biden himself behind it all,” said founder and president of the pro-Trump Article III Project Mike Davis. “Democrats know this lawfare is backfiring badly and propelling Trump back to the White House.”
Trump’s 2024 national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Biden believes he can only defeat Trump if he is imprisoned. “Joe Biden knows imprisoning President Trump is the only way he can win in November,” she contended.
“This was their plan all along,” Donald Trump Jr. said on his podcast Triggered. “It really undercuts all the nonsense that even the Democrats are out there kind of creating.”
Democrats reacted differently to Politico’s report. They appeared to defend Biden’s election interference by slamming Garland for not helping Biden win reelection with a more politically expedient indictment timetable.
“I think Garland will be criticized by historians,” Robert Shrum, a Democrat consultant, told Politico.
“What Democrats do is they bend over backwards not to look partisan, and then they end up hiring people that are partisan but in the other direction,” one Biden donor said. “There’s no question in my mind that the villain here is Merrick Garland [in the Biden administration].”