Biden is in free-fall. But not everyone wants to go down with the ship.
And now a top Biden official stabbed Joe in the back in the eleventh hour.
A former senior adviser to President Biden has taken aim at Hunter Biden’s controversial pardon, calling it an “attack on our judicial system.”
Anita Dunn, a close Biden confidant and former senior communications adviser, voiced her agreement with pardoning the president’s 54-year-old son but criticized the timing and justification behind the move.
“I absolutely agree with the president’s decision here. 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,” Dunn said during remarks at the New York Times’ annual DealBook Summit, posted on Wednesday.
While Dunn acknowledged that Hunter “deserves” the pardon, she firmly rejected the rationale offered by Biden.
“The argument and sort of the rationale” behind the decision, she argued, fail to hold up under scrutiny.
“The argument is one that I think many observers are concerned about,” she said.
“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.’”
Biden, now 82, justified the pardon by claiming Hunter was “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted” for federal gun and tax charges.
Hunter was convicted by a Delaware jury in June on three felony charges related to lying on a federal gun purchase form in 2018 while battling an addiction to crack cocaine.
In addition, Hunter pleaded guilty in September to nine tax charges, including three felonies, after evading $1.4 million in taxes while indulging in a lavish lifestyle that included “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, [and] clothing.”
The pardon, sweeping in scope, covers any offenses committed — or potentially committed — by Hunter between Jan. 1, 2014, and Dec. 1, 2024.
This came despite repeated denials from the White House and Biden himself that a pardon was under consideration.
Dunn suggested the decision was orchestrated primarily by the Biden family and Hunter’s defense team, with little involvement from White House officials.
“Had this pardon been done at the end of the term, in the context of compassion, the way many pardons will be done, I am sure, and many commutations will be done, I think would have been a different story,” she said.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
