President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign sent “special guests” to stump for the incumbent on Tuesday outside the Manhattan courthouse where former President Donald Trump has been defending himself from Democrat lawfare. Just days prior, Politico reported that Biden will comment from the White House on the impending verdict in the show trial once it’s delivered. As if Biden’s previous decisions to taunt Trump for being detained in court and fundraise off the lawfare campaign weren’t enough evidence, Team Biden’s last-minute press calls confirm the inherently political nature of the lawfare spectacle.
The campaign enlisted anti-Trump actor Robert De Niro and former Capitol Police officers Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone to act as surrogates for the president outside the courtroom where Trump’s defense is making closing arguments. Biden’s reelection campaign sent out a press release hyping the event.
“You all are already here,” Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said when asked why the campaign chose to host a political presser outside the courthouse where a lawfare trial is underway. “It’s easy to talk about the choice in this election when the entire news media is camped out here day in and day out.”
The press has been present for every day of the trial since it began in April. Biden’s campaign, however, made its first appearance Tuesday, the same day closing arguments are held and the same week the jury will begin deliberations.
Tyler also said Biden’s team would campaign against Trump “as he sits in that building,” referring to the courthouse. Trump has been kept off the campaign trail for weeks for a case experts have dubbed “dubious” at best.
While speaking to reporters, De Niro alleged Trump could “destroy the whole world” if he wins.
“And elections? Forget about it. That’s over,” De Niro baselessly said, according to the New York Post. “That’s done. If [Trump] gets in, I can tell you right now. He will never leave. He will never leave. You know that. He will never leave.”
Spectators in the left-wing enclave were less than pleased with De Niro’s appearance, with some shouting down the “washed up” actor and calling him a “nobody.” De Niro responded by calling people “gangsters” before shouting “f-ck you.”
For his part, Fanone trotted out Democrats’ dramatic narrative about Jan. 6, 2021.
“I came here today to remind Americans of what Donald Trump is capable of and the violence that he unleashed on all of Americans on Jan. 6, 2021,” Fanone said.
Their appearance came just days after Politico, citing “four people familiar with internal deliberations,” reported Biden will address the lawfare case after a verdict is reached. Biden plans to make such an appearance from the White House to “show his statement isn’t political,” Politico reported.
Biden’s team is gearing up to use a potential conviction to argue that “Trump is ill-suited for office and that [the verdict] demonstrates the extremes to which the former president would go to win again,” Politico reported. “The campaign’s social media team is considering leveraging the line of attack further, with discussions underway about referring to the ex-president online as ‘Convicted Felon Donald Trump.'”
The decision by the Biden campaign and its “special guests” to use the weaponization of the justice system as a backdrop further confirms the political nature of the show trials.
We already knew that former No. 3 in Biden’s Department of Justice, Matthew Colangelo, was hired to help “jump-start” the lawfare against Trump in Manhattan, as pointed out by my colleague Margot Cleveland.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, previously hired three outside lawyers from a firm that hosted a $2,800 per-plate fundraiser for Biden in 2020. One of the attorneys, Mark Pomerantz, was brought on to focus “solely on the Trump investigation,” according to The New York Times.
Meanwhile, Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, is a Biden donor whose daughter is a Democratic operative with big-name clients like Adam Schiff, who baselessly pushed the Russian-collusion hoax.