(Washington) President Joe Biden set the tone for his administration’s approach to former President Donald Trump’s indictment on Friday with a firm refusal to comment on the case.
Vice President Kamala Harris and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre separately declined to comment.
Both justified their decision by the fact that the file is evolving.
“Look, we’re just not going to comment on a pending case, and I’ll leave it at that,” Ms. Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One en route to Mississippi, where the president was traveling to see the damage from a recent storm.
Donald Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on Thursday, making him the first former US president to face criminal charges. This could hurt his chances of being carried over to the White House in 2024.
The charges remained under seal, but the investigation focused on payments that were allegedly used during the 2016 election campaign to buy the silence of a woman claiming to have had an adulterous relationship with him.
Mr Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing and has repeatedly attacked the investigation, called the indictment a “political persecution”. He predicted it would hurt Democrats in 2024.
Some congressional Republicans have lined up behind the former president. Representatives Jim Jordan, James Comer, and Bryan Steil criticized the grand jury investigation as an “unprecedented abuse of power.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office defended the case in a letter to House Republicans, calling their criticism “unnecessary and unwarranted.”
The letter is the only substantial public comment on the matter from Mr. Bragg’s office since Thursday’s indictment.
“Worse still, based on your seemingly close collaboration with Mr. Trump in attacking this office and the grand jury process, it appears that you are acting more like a criminal defense attorney trying to gather evidence for a client rather than ‘a legislative body seeking to achieve a legitimate legislative result,’ he lamented.
Mr. Bragg did not respond to questions from reporters about the indictment against Donald Trump on Friday morning, after attending a high-profile sentencing hearing in another case.
