Former top Biden aide slams Hunter Biden pardon rollout strategy
By Samantha Waldenberg and Betsy Klein, CNN
Washington (CNN) — One of President Joe Biden’s former top communications advisers ravaged the president’s messaging rollout strategy around his decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, lambasting the situation as “exceptionally poor timing” in a major public rebuke of her former boss.
“In the middle of a Kash Patel weekend, kind of throwing this into the middle of it was exceptionally poor timing and … the argument is one that I think many observers are concerned about: A president who ran to restore the rule of law, who has upheld the rule of law, who has really defended the rule of law kind of saying, ‘Well, maybe not right now,’” former senior Biden adviser Anita Dunn said in a panel discussion with CNN contributor and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, which posted online Wednesday.
Dunn was a deeply loyal aide with a big-picture view of Biden’s strategy – with a hand in nearly all aspects of his political life. In the days after Biden announced his decision to step down from his 2024 candidacy, a decision kept to a tight circle of aides that she learned of moments before Biden announced it to the world, Dunn departed the White House for a super PAC supporting Vice President Kamala Harris.
During the December 4 New York Times DealBook Summit event, Dunn underscored the criticism Biden has faced from members of his own party that his justification of the pardon of his son undercut faith in the US judicial system.
“I do not agree with the way it was done, I don’t agree with the timing, and I don’t agree, frankly, with the attack on our judicial system,” she said, later reiterating that she disagreed on “the timing, the argument, and sort of, the rationale.”
Dunn suggested that the decision and messaging was coordinated by the Biden family and Hunter Biden’s defense team. The president has said he made the decision over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend while with family in Nantucket.
“The White House was really not part of this process. It was a process that was done very much internally with the family and with the defense lawyers,” she said.
A new CNN/SSRS poll released on Wednesday shows that just one-third of Americans (32%) approve of the president’s decision to pardon his son, while 68% disapprove.
The White House has defended Biden’s decision, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre arguing that President-elect Donald Trump would not slow down in pursuit of bringing charges against Hunter Biden in the future.
“I think he truly believed enough is enough. This is, this is we have seen in last five years or so, the president’s political opponents say this– not even, I mean, this is not the president saying it, they said it themselves, they were going after Hunter Biden, and so he made this decision,” Jean-Pierre said on December 2.
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