The power couple at the center of Biden’s political universe

For more than three decades, Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn have ascended to the pinnacle of Washington power.

Bauer, President Joe Biden’s personal lawyer who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama, is the godfather of Democratic election lawyers. Dunn, Biden’s adviser at the White House who was communications director under Obama, is the city’s grande dame of public relations.

Since early November, they have been at the center of Biden’s strategy to handle the search for classified documents among his papers from previous jobs. That strategy kept the story hidden from the public for more than two months, demonstrating the tension between the law and public relations spheres: Bauer and Dunn, Biden’s most trusted advisers, respectively. And it’s a rare moment that has shed light on a power couple that usually works behind the scenes with less fanfare and less criticism.

“If it’s a room of five people, Anita and Bob are two of them,” said a former White House aide, who asked to remain anonymous because the person was not authorized to speak on the record about White House business. Was.”

To get a better understanding of Dunn and Bauer’s roles in Biden’s orbit, NBC News spoke to more than a dozen former White House and presidential campaign aides, as well as strategists and former aides. In most cases, these people requested that their names be withheld — some out of loyalty to the couple, some out of fear of retribution and some because they were not authorized by their employers to speak publicly. The White House declined to comment for this piece.

The documents matter has created a series of delicate friction points between the president’s institutional interests, his personal legal interests, and the public’s interest in transparency. As his personal attorney and his de facto chief public communications advisor, Bauer and Dunn are at the nexus of those points of tension.

Bauer, along with Richard Sauber and Stuart Delery in the White House counsel’s office, is part of a legal center that has directed the Biden team’s liaison with the Justice Department and the National Archives and Records Administration. person familiar with his work, This person said the group of White House aides involved in the search was immediately a bit larger and included Dunn.

in a statement Earlier this month, Bauer said Biden had instructed his lawyers to “prospect and fully cooperate” with the DOJ and NARA. He also pointed out the limits of public disclosure.

Biden’s personal attorneys “attempt to balance the importance of public transparency, where appropriate, with established norms and limitations necessary to protect the integrity of the investigation,” Bauer wrote. “These considerations require avoiding public release of details relevant to the investigation while it is ongoing.”

Many Democrats said the prioritization of legal interests over public relations came at a short-term political cost and could turn into a long-term liability.

A second former White House official said, “Whatever strategy he employed didn’t serve him well—a lack of transparency from November through January.” “Even if there is a good reason for it, it doesn’t satisfy the press, and it creates an image problem.”

ultimate power couple

It is not uncommon for married couples to work for the same politician. In the small circles of Washington politics, what really matters is how many people meet their spouses. But in the history of presidential politics, few unelected couples have become so influential as Bauer and Dunn—practically the furniture in the modern-day Democratic Oval Office.

Rising in their respective fields, often working for the same boss in Democratic politics, they have built a vast network of associates, amassed hundreds of millions of dollars, held prestigious roles and influenced the political fortunes and decisions of many. influenced the taking. The most prominent person in the Democratic Party.

Dunn and Bauer have built parallel careers that intersect from time to time. He was General Counsel on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee some 35 years ago and she was Director of Communications. Married in 1993, they worked together on Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign, with Bauer playing Al Gore in mock debates. Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, whose operation provided much of the talent for Obama’s team, counted Bauer and Dunn among his advisers. And, of course, he has played a key role on the campaign trail and in the presidency for Obama and Biden.

According to colleagues, there is a simple reason for his success: he can be trusted to handle difficult tasks with competence and discretion.

“People know they can depend on them in the trenches,” said Minion Moore, who served as political director in Bill Clinton’s White House and has known Dunn and Bauer through decades of work in Democratic politics. . “For Joe Biden, what he gets from both of them is history — they’re legends, they’re invincible, they don’t need the limelight. … People can’t be punished for being true public servants.” . They don’t have to do that.”

SKDK is one of the top PR firms in Washington Powerful Client List Spread across corporate America, Democratic campaigns and the non-profit world. And in a city whose currency is power, Dunn’s long career in the top echelons of politics has brought success outside government as well.

When Dunn filed a financial disclosure late last year after she returned to the White House in a full-time position, she showed an investment portfolio with an estimated net worth of Between $18 million and $46 million that it will have to disinvest.

Former colleagues and associates describe Dunn as the ultimate strategist, always thinking five and six steps ahead of everyone else.

It was Dunn who recognized early in Barack Obama’s first campaign that Michelle Obama would be a gift with the public and also felt that Mrs. Obama was not getting the publicity she deserved. She called Stephanie Cutter — a longtime Democratic operative who was involved in Biden’s 2020 campaign and said she worked with Bauer and Dunn for 25 years, dating back to the Daschle days — and offered her a job with Michelle Obama. encouraged to do.

Cutter hesitated at first, but Dunn pressed him.

“She could see on the campaign and certainly in front of a lot of other people in the media that Michelle had power on the campaign trail and could play a leading role in the campaign,” Cutter said.

At the end of the Obama administration, Bauer and Dunn helped prepare Biden for a possible bid for the presidency in 2016 – a race he ultimately decided not to run. When he ran in 2020, the two became key players in his campaign.

During the darkest days of that year’s primaries for Biden, who had lost the first three contests, Dunn temporarily took over the reins of the operation to stabilize it. She also recruited Jane O’Malley Dillon, who became Biden’s campaign manager as he eluded the nomination and headed for the general election.

“She was like the campaign chair,” the first White House aide said of Dunn. “Nothing — budget, hiring, messaging — none of these decisions were made without Anita signing off on them or having input on them.”

At times, Bauer and Dunn played on either end of the resulting moments. Dunn led the search for vice presidential candidates, which included some of America’s highest-profile female politicians. On the other end of the search was Bauer, at times personally on calls with those candidates or their teams as he reviewed their legal papers. Once Kamala Harris was selected as vice chair, it was Dunn who called at least one other front runner to ask if she would serve as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, people with knowledge of the call said. he said.

Perhaps no other episode during the campaign was more emblematic of their powerful roles than the final days of the 2020 campaign. At the Westin Hotel in Wilmington, Del., just a handful of top advisers huddled a room where they charted next steps in an unknown race fog — Dunn and Bauer were among them. Bauer was not only the strategic leader who set the tone for not toying with Trump’s every whim, but the public face who underscored to the media that democracy worked.

“Trump had too many legit voices in the chorus and Joe had one, and it was Bob, and Bob was fantastic,” Bradley, a former New Jersey senator and presidential candidate, said in an interview.

And as aides flooded networks with questions about when the presidential election winner would make the final call, Dunn was working on the possibility of alternately winding down a campaign and moving toward transition.

A former campaign aide said, “Anita was pushing the train.”

two of a Kind?

Dunn entered the Biden White House initially as a temporary employee, earning a salary of $129,000, under the $132,552 threshold required to file a financial disclosure. Eventually, Dunn left — returning for a brief one-week stint to fill in for Dillon, a deputy chief of staff — and then came back last year on a more permanent basis when Biden’s legislative agenda was in trouble and his polling numbers were down. I was speeding up.

Several White House aides worked for or were recruited by Dunn at SKDK. Bauer, who did not join the administration, has served as a sounding board for White House lawyers on potential staff.

His vast network points to his many years in Democratic politics mentoring new talent. But it has also raised concerns among some of Biden’s former allies that the pair have too much influence, leaving Biden vulnerable to closed-minded thinking in a moment of political and legal crisis.

“You don’t just have two people, but two incredibly important departments,” said a former Biden aide, referring to communications and legal functions.

Cutter dismisses the idea that he has concentrated power.

“Why so much influence? They don’t have the same mind,” said Cutter. “It’s offensive to group them together as a unit because they’re married. It’s disrespectful to the decades of accomplishments they’ve accomplished as individuals. They’re not in the room because they’re Bob Bauer and Anita is the couple. They’re in the room as Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn, providing their perspective and the best advice they can think of.”

Similarly, Bradley laughed off the suggestion that the two could make much of an impact as a couple.

“Give me a break. I don’t think democracy can have too many ramifications for the people,” Bradley said. “These are individuals who have the public interest at heart. You want to have people like that around public officials.”