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In early 2021 there was a chance to help the Senate bar DONALD TRUMP from running for president in 2024, but President JOE BIDEN and his team didn’t want to go for it. In fact, they fought against it.
Much was written at the time about the new president publicly distancing himself from the Senate impeachment trial of Trump for his actions on Jan. 6th and talking about the pandemic instead. A new book by RACHAEL BADE (a POLITICO colleague) and The Washington Post’s KAROUN DEMIRJIAN reports that wasn’t just a messaging tactic.
Rather, behind the scenes the new Biden administration resisted repeated appeals from impeachment managers like Rep. JAMIE RASKIN (D-Md.) for access to potential witnesses and documents.
Bade and Demirjian report that the White House rebuffed Raskin and his team’s requests to depose Trump’s Secret Service detail from Jan. 6 and the White House stewards working that day. Raskin’s team also asked the White House if they’d waive executive privilege for Trump in the face of subpoenas, but Biden’s advisers balked. The Pentagon and the Justice Department similarly pushed back against granting access to certain witnesses or documents, they report.
“The managers had received word that the servers who witnessed Trump’s behavior on January 6 might be willing to share what they knew. But the new Biden White House wanted nothing to do with the idea,” the authors write. “It would set a terrible precedent if they came after the Secret Service, incoming Biden aides told them, and the Biden administration would fight it.”
The pair note, however, there was a precedent to deposing Secret Service members: independent counsel KEN STARR successfully subpoenaed BILL CLINTON’s agents. The White House was also wary of any partisan votes during the trial that would require Vice President KAMALA HARRIS to break a tie. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s counsel, MARK PATTERSON, told the team that Harris wanted “nothing to do with the trial,” they write. “‘She will not like it, and we will not like it,’ he said, urging the managers to avoid anything that wasn’t supported on a bipartisan basis.”
Asked by West Wing Playbook why the White House rebuffed these requests, a current spokesperson said they’d circle back but didn’t. The White House also did not respond to Bade and Demirjian’s requests for comment before their book was published.
The revelations capture a key early decision point in the Biden White House that could have far-reaching consequences. Biden’s advisers decided they wanted the Senate to conduct the impeachment trial quickly, and they declined to aggressively fight for a conviction when Trump was at his most vulnerable. The president and his team were anxious to advance their fight against Covid, pass his legislative agenda and confirm the rest of his Cabinet. Plus, weighing in on impeachment would undermine Biden’s campaign pledge to move the country past Trump and focus on “unity,” the White House’s early buzzword.
“We made a conscious decision when the president came into office that we didn’t want to make his presidency a continued campaign and battle with Donald Trump,” JEN PSAKI, the former press secretary, said in “Year One,” the HBO documentary that debuted Wednesday. “President Biden wanted me to take the temperature down in the country.”
A Trump conviction would have allowed a simple Senate majority to prohibit Trump from running for president in 2024. But a conviction after a lengthy trial wasn’t guaranteed or even likely. Many Democrats and Republicans alike felt at the time that Trump was already too toxic to ever win another office after inciting the riot on the Capitol.
It didn’t work out that way. As Trump’s popularity among Republican voters has continued, GOP officeholders have followed suit and the former president is the frontrunner to be the party’s nominee in 2024.
“With the Jan. 6 committee probe, they’ve come back and done an outstanding job summoning Trump’s inner circle and fighting to enforce their subpoenas,” Bade told us. “But they lost the moment. The public has moved on and the panel’s work isn’t changing minds.”
P.S. Bade is both a colleague and a friend and we encourage you to buy the book here to see what you think! Let’s give them the legendary West Wing Playbook bump!
MESSAGE US — Are you DANA REMUS, the former White House counsel for Biden? We want to hear from you! And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at [email protected].
Source: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2022/10/19/woulda-coulda-shoulda-00062562
