Anita Dunn Was Behind Decision to Keep Classified Docs Story From the Press

Joe Biden is now officially in trouble. While many in the media are eager to point out that Biden’s classified document scandal isn’t as bad in some ways as Trump’s classified document scandal, some realists have admitted that they’re similar enough that there’s probably not a lot to be gained here. And one reason that’s true is that while Biden’s people did quickly call the National Archives to, in effect, turn themselves in once the documents were found, they sat on the findings as far as the public was concerned.

If you’ve watched any of the White House press briefings this week then you already know this has been something the White House press corps has repeatedly brought up. Why did you not inform the public about the election until after it was over? Why wasn’t the White House as forthcoming with Americans as it was with the bureaucrats?

Both the Washington Post And the NY Times Deep dives have been published to try and explain why the White House behaved this way. Some Democrats even agreed with the decision to cover the story. was a mistake.

Doug Jones (D.Ala.), a former senator, said that the Biden Team was correct to quickly notify authorities of its discoveries. He also stated that it was crucial to respond appropriately from an legal perspective. He said that the White House could have been transparenter with the public.

“I would have probably opted to do some things a little bit differently,” Jones was a former prosecutor. “When it came the appropriate time to make a statement, give as much facts as you can without jeopardizing the investigation.”

So why did they just sit on it? This is the Post’s answer. They believed it would be done quickly, which seemed to make the situation better. PR strategy.

Early on, Biden’s attorneys and Justice Department investigators both thought they had a shared understanding about keeping the matter quiet. They had different reasons.

The White House hoped for a quick inquiry to determine if there was any intentional mishandling of documents. Justice would then give its all-clear.

Even though the story was finally revealed several weeks later by the media, the White House insisted that the facts be kept secret.

CBS News was the first news outlet to discover the situation. They contacted the White House Jan. 6 in order to inquire about the Penn Biden Center documents. White House officials confirmed the scoop, but since the investigation was ongoing, they decided not to offer any additional details — including the critical information that a second batch of documents had been discovered at Biden’s home.

Today, the NY Times published their take on the secret decisions made about this possible scandal. The Times names another top Biden adviser, Crisis PR Specialist, as one of the few who knew the truth from the beginning. Anita Dunn.

The handful of advisers who were aware of the initial discovery on Nov. 2 — six days before the midterm elections — gambled that without going public, they could convince the Justice Department that the matter was little more than a minor, good-faith mistake, unlike former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of documents at his Florida estate…

The discussions on how to deal with the matter, at least at the start, were confined to the husband-and-wife pair of Bob Bauer, the president’s top personal attorney, and Anita Dunn, a White House senior adviser; Mike Donilon, the president’s longtime confidant and speechwriter; Mr. Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens; Stuart F. Delery, the White House counsel; and Richard Sauber, a White House lawyer overseeing the response to investigations, according to people familiar with the situation.

If you’re not familiar with Dunn, she was the person behind the war on Fox News during the Obama administration. She’s been in and out of the White House since the start of the Biden administration. She was instrumental in the creation of the phrase “ultra MAGA” and I strongly suspect she’s the person behind Biden’s border strategy PR, i.e. refusing to admit there’s a crisis and always referring to the situation as a “challenge.”

The Times story suggests that the desire to keep the investigation in the documents quiet came from Biden’s lawyers who were afraid publicizing the situation would make it more likely a special counsel would be appointed. Normally the advice of the lawyers would be at odds with the advice of the communications staff who genuinely think it’s better to get out ahead of scandals, but not in this case.

Once the discovery of the original batch of documents was revealed, Ms. Dunn was adamant that the White House should keep the public information flow to a trickle and focus instead on how different Mr. Biden’s case was from the broader investigation into his predecessor, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Ms. Dunn also stressed the need to underscore the differences between Mr. Biden’s cooperation with the archives and Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s defiance…

In announcing Mr. Hur’s selection, Mr. Garland, who seldom discusses prosecutorial moves not previously disclosed in court filings, offered his own detailed timeline of the department’s involvement in the case, revealing for the first time that the second batch of classified material had been discovered by Mr. Biden’s team on Dec. 20, weeks after the first.

The Justice Department was able to appear more transparent than the White House about the matter. For the president’s team, that brought immediate blowback as reporters pressed for more answers and Republicans accused the White House of a cover-up.

Because they were transparenter than the White House, the DOJ seemed more transparent than it was. Because there was a covering-up, it appears that there was one. If the story hadn’t leaked, the White House would have gone on saying nothing because that’s how Anita Dunn likes it.

Again, I can’t prove she’s the person behind Biden’s approach to the border but I think there are some obvious similarities. Her approach is to establish the terms of debate by withholding information as long as possible, and then spin any leaks where they are necessary.

I have to wonder if people in the White House aren’t getting little tired of Dunn’s advice. Granted she helped them bury the border story for many months but ultimately that didn’t fix the problem or avert the crisis. The same applies to classified documents. Although she kept it off the news for several months, it eventually came out. And when it did, the White House looks very shifty in its efforts to keep it quiet for so long.

One person is not likely to be thrilled by it, I can tell ya.

REPORTER: “Did you know?”

KJP: “No I did not know!”

REPORTER: “When did you learn about the documents found at the Penn Center…?”

KJP: “When your team was doing a story on it.” pic.twitter.com/v2T7mAUR51

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 17, 2023