‘Attack on our judicial system’

A former top adviser to President Biden criticized Hunter Biden’s apology earlier this month, arguing that it was an “attack on our judicial system”.

Anita DunnThe longtime Biden aide, who served as his senior adviser for communications, indicated she supported the decision to pardon the 54-year-old first son, but not for the reasons the president used to justify it. Used to accommodate.

“I completely agree with the President’s decision here. I don’t 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 in remarks at The New York Times’ annual DealBook summit. Posted on Wednesday,

Dunn argued that Hunter “deserves” a pardon but that “the logic and reason” for it are not sound.

“I think this argument is one that many observers are concerned about,” the former White House official said. “A president who ran to restore the rule of law, who has upheld the rule of law, who actually defended the rule of law, said, ‘Well, maybe not right now.'”

In his announcement last week, Biden, 82, said he pardoned Hunter because he was being “selectively and unfairly prosecuted” for federal gun and tax crimes.

Delaware jury convicts Hunter Biden He was charged with three felonies in June after lying about his cocaine addiction on a federal gun purchase form in 2018.

In September, the first son also pleaded guilty to nine tax charges, including three felonies. $1.4 million payment fraud The IRS found him spending excessively on “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing” and other personal items.

The president’s blanket pardon applies to any crime Hunter committed — or potentially committed — between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.

White House officials and Biden himself have since repeatedly denied that Hunter would be issued a pardon.

Dunn suggested that White House officials “were not part of the process” and that the Biden family and defense attorneys came to the conclusion that a pardon was necessary for Hunter.

He said, “If this pardon had been done in a context of compassion at the end of the period, the way many pardons would have been done, I’m sure, and many commutations would have been done, I think that would have been a different story.” ,