Top Biden Adviser Anita Dunn Slams Hunter Pardon: ‘An Attack on the Judicial System’

Anita Dunn, a longtime ally of President Joe Biden, criticized his decision to pardon his son Hunter Biden on Wednesday at an event that was hosted by The New York Times and moderated by Maggie Haberman.

Dunn, who resigned as Biden’s senior adviser in July, described his sweeping pardon of his son as “an attack on the judicial system” and also criticized its timing.

At the Times‘ annual DealBook Summit, Dunn joined a panel with Kellyanne Conway, Kevin McCarthy, Van Jones, Jonathan Karl, and others to discuss the 2024 election and other hot topics.

After Haberman raised the issue of Biden’s pardon of his son, she asked Dunn, “Why did it cover such an expansive time period, and how long has President Biden actually been considering it?”

Dunn replied:

I can only say that I don’t speak for President Biden any longer and was not party to the conversations that were held about this. But but let me just start by saying that I do not believe and I don’t think most people believe that Hunter Biden should go to jail and that, you know, he had a serious addiction, that he broke the law, that he has pled guilty to, that that he has been held accountable and has actually been publicly pilloried in a way that very few people who commit these crimes have ever been pilloried.

So he has paid a certain price. He’s also someone who has turned his life around, who has been sober now since 2019, who has a young child and is actually going to be a grandfather sometime next year. And 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. 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.

Haberman asked Dunn to expound on her final comment when she said, “You say a little bit more about that in terms of the attack on the judicial system, because that was what was most striking to people who criticize this pardon.”

Dunn responded she felt a pardon was appropriate but added, “So, you know, Maggie, as I say, I agree with the decision to pardon. I absolutely think that Hunter deserves a pardon here. But I disagreed on the timing. The argument and sort of the rationale.”

The president’s former top aide said Biden should have pardoned his son at the very end of his term out of compassion.

Biden said last week he made the decision to pardon his son because he believed his prosecutions on gun and tax charges were political.