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So far this week, President Joe Biden has announced new steps to conserve land and water. He met with the cast of “Ted Lasso” to discuss mental health and released a 500-page report on the economy.
Missing was any acknowledgment of the drama that has transfixed much of Washington: the possible criminal indictment of his past and potentially future rival, Donald Trump.
There’s no blueprint for what a sitting president should do when a predecessor is charged with a crime — something that’s never happened in the nation’s history. Biden’s approach, for now, has been to keep silent and avoid a scrum that threatens to pull him in, Democratic strategists and people close to the White House said.
A Trump indictment could create a thorny set of temptations and pitfalls for a sitting president on the cusp of a re-election campaign. Democrats close to Biden see Trump as a heavy favorite to be the Republican nominee in 2024 — and a flawed candidate they want to face in a general election.
A go-to move for campaigns on any level is to amplify rivals’ troubles — a temptation to talk endlessly about the legal problems plaguing Trump. But Biden needs to be reticent given his position, legal experts cautioned. He appointed Merrick Garland, the attorney general who will ultimately decide whether to prosecute Trump in a separate federal investigation stemming from his handling of classified documents and his efforts to reverse the 2020 election results.
Any comment Biden makes about Trump’s mounting legal troubles could be construed as an attempt to influence Garland.
