Top White House Adviser Worked for Pfizer Before Joining Administration: Disclosure

Senior White House adviser Anita Dunn counts pharmaceutical giant Pfizer as a former client, according to a recently released ethics disclosure.

Dunn is a senior adviser to President Joe Biden and managing director of SKDKnickerbocker, a public affairs and political consulting firm that has forged connections with major political figures within the Democratic Party.

She was the senior adviser to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and worked for the president in that same capacity from January 2021 through August of that year, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still in full swing, before returning for a brief stint from March 1 to 8. During that time, she was classified as a “special government employee,” according to The Washington Post. 

Dunn, who also served as a former senior adviser and White House communications director during the Obama administration, returned to the White House as an assistant and senior adviser to the president in May, which meant she was required by law to file a public disclosure form.

Dunn consulted for several major companies over the two years prior to her May appointment: AT&T, Lyft, Micron, Intra-Cellular Therapies, Salesforce, Reddit, and Pfizer, according to the recent disclosure, which was first reported by CNBC’s Brian Schwartz,

Under “other assets and income,” Dunn also lists Pfizer, and states that it has a value of $1,001 – $15,000, although the income amount states “None (or less than $201).”

In February 2021, Dunn was reported as saying that “COVID is the best thing that ever happened” to President Joe Biden in the book “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes of NBC News and The Hill, respectively.

Sizeable Investment Portfolio

The 93-page financial disclosure document also shows that Dunn did consulting work for the D.C.–based renewables trade group American Clean Power Association; Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company founded by Melinda French Gates; and the Center for American Progress Action, a liberal public policy research and advocacy organization.

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