Anita Dunn, a former senior adviser to President Biden, was critical of the timing and way in which the president pardoned his son, but backed the ultimate decision to do so.
“I absolutely think that Hunter deserves a pardon here but I disagree on the timing, the argument and sort of the rationale,” she said at a New York Times event on Wednesday.
Dunn left the White House in July to take on a top role advising a Democratic super PAC ahead of November’s election. She said on Wednesday that she was never part of a pardon discussion, beyond that aides were told to tell the press “no” when asked about if Biden would pardon his son.
Biden announced earlier this month he would pardon his son earlier after insisting for over a year that he would not. When defending the about-face, the White House said he believed Republicans and President-elect Trump wouldn’t let up on prosecuting his son once the incoming administration took over.
Biden argued that his son was singled out politically after the younger Biden was found guilty in June in a federal case on three felony charges over his purchase and possession of a gun in 2018, violating the law by concealing drug use.
Dunn told the New York Times that she did not agree with the criticism of the judicial system in Biden's announcement about the pardon.
“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. “So I will say 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 was a member of Biden’s inner circle before she left the White House, and her husband, Bob Bauer, has been the president’s personal attorney. Bauer represented Biden amid a special counsel investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.
