President Joe Biden’s former senior adviser has publicly slammed the “timing, the argument,” and the “rationale” behind the decision to pardon his son Hunter.
Anita Dunn, who left the White House in July for an advisory role on a Democratic super PAC ahead of the presidential election, said it would have been “a different story” had the pardon come at the end of the term.
The president sent shockwaves through the political world earlier this month when he announced his decision to grant his son clemency, claiming that Hunter had been “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted” by the Department of Justice.
The timing of the decision has not gone down well with Dunn, one of his longest serving aides.
“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 The New York Times annual DealBook Summit last Wednesday.
“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.
It is the first time Dunn, who was one of the first to exit the White House when Biden stepped aside in July, publicly criticized her former boss, according to Politico. “The argument is one that I think many observers are concerned about,” she said at the event.
“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.’”
Ultimately, Biden’s longtime aide said she “absolutely agreed” with the decision, but not 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 added.
The pardon came less than two weeks ahead of Hunter’s sentencing, which was originally scheduled to happen December 12, for his conviction on federal gun charges back in June.
Biden previously ruled out a pardon for his son.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Biden said on December 1.
The move received backlash from both Democrats and Republicans.
