After first ignoring the criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump and then cleverly insinuating that “Wednesday is free” – a court holiday – President Biden’s campaign has now jumped on the ploy to highlight the unprecedented situation of a major party presidential candidate awaiting a felony sentencing.
The Biden campaign held a news conference outside a Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday, featuring actor Robert De Niro, who narrates the campaign’s latest ad, as well as former U.S. Capitol Police officers Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone, who have criticized Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
De Niro said Trump had engaged in “cowardly violence” after the 2020 election.
“He’s instructing the mob to do his dirty work for him,” he said.
This press conference was exactly what the Trump campaign would have done from the start if the political situation had been reversed.
While the Biden team has for weeks followed the president’s instructions to the letter not to address the criminal charges facing Trump or comment on the trial, the decision to send a representative to the Manhattan courthouse while the former president’s lawyers were making closing arguments was hardly subtle.
De Niro and the two former officers did not comment on Trump’s Manhattan trial – where he is charged with falsifying business records related to hush money payments to porn actresses before the 2016 election – but sought to draw attention to Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6 incident, which is the subject of a separate pending federal criminal case against him.
De Niro also addressed a civil lawsuit last year in which a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming former magazine journalist E. Jean Carroll. In January, the former president was ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million in damages. The Biden campaign has barely discussed the lawsuit or the ruling against Trump.
“Just a few blocks away from here, a jury found him responsible for sexual abuse,” De Niro said.
The Biden campaign tried to argue that inviting De Niro and two Capitol Police officers to Trump’s trial was not a comment on the incident, but a comment on the reporters who had gathered to cover it.
“We’re not here today because of what’s going on over there,” campaign communications director Michael Tyler told reporters gathered outside the courthouse. “We’re here today because you’re here.”
A large protest area outside the courthouse was manned by demonstrators, and many of the press conferences during the trial drew some level of heckling. A crowd of Trump supporters yelled at De Niro and the former Capitol Police officers when they appeared downtown, calling Trump an elitist and them traitors.
Trump is seeking to consolidate four pending criminal cases into one that he baselessly alleges Biden is behind. In addition to the Manhattan case, Trump is also charged in another federal case over his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as in a Georgia lawsuit over his efforts to overturn the results of that year’s election.
The Trump campaign was quick to respond to Biden’s press conference.
“The Biden team finally did it,” said Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the campaign. “After saying for months that there were no politics in this trial, they showed up and held a successful campaign event.”
He called De Niro’s involvement a desperate effort by Biden’s campaign to boost his popularity, called De Niro a “fading actor” and argued that Biden campaign staff at the press conference felt it was not a good idea to hide in the shadow of the court.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chang said the Biden team was making a “political mockery” of the criminal case with its latest appearance.
Asked about the Biden campaign’s claim that it held a press conference at the courthouse because national media had been stationed there for weeks, campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt simply said, “They’re pathetic.”
