For more than three decades, Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn have climbed to the summit of Washington power.
Bauer, the personal lawyer to President Joe Biden who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama, is the godfather of Democratic election lawyers. Dunn, an adviser to Biden in 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 for handling the discovery of classified documents among his papers from past jobs. That strategy kept the story hidden from the public for more than two months, demonstrating the tension between the areas in which Bauer and Dunn, respectively, are Biden’s most trusted advisers: law and public relations. And it is a rare moment that has shined a light on a power pair that usually operates behind the scenes with little fanfare and even 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 this person was not authorized to speak on the record about White House business.
To get a better sense of Dunn's and Bauer’s roles in Biden’s orbit, NBC News spoke with more than a dozen former White House and presidential campaign aides, as well as strategists and former colleagues. Most of these people requested that their names be withheld — some out of a loyalty to the couple, some for fear of retribution and some because they were not authorized to speak publicly by their employers. The White House declined to comment for this story.
The documents case has created a series of delicate friction points among the president’s institutional interests, his personal legal interests and the public’s interest in transparency. As his personal lawyer and his de facto chief public communications adviser, Bauer and Dunn are at the nexus of those tension points.
Bauer, along with Richard Sauber and Stuart Delery in the White House counsel’s office, is part of a legal nucleus that has guided the Biden team’s contact with the Justice Department and the National Archives and Records Administration, according to a person familiar with their work. The group of White House aides who were looped in immediately on the discovery was slightly larger and included Dunn, this person said.
In a statement earlier this month, Bauer said Biden had instructed his lawyers to be “forthcoming and fully cooperative” with the Justice Department and the National Archives and Records Administration. He also explained the limits on public disclosure.
Biden’s personal lawyers “have attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity,” Bauer wrote. “These considerations require avoiding the public release of detail relevant to the investigation while it is ongoing.”
That prioritization of legal interests over public relations has come at a short-term political cost and could turn into a long-term liability, several Democrats said.
“Whatever strategy they had has not served him well — the lack of transparency from November to January,” said a second former White House official. “Even if there’s a good reason for it, it hasn’t satisfied the press, and that creates an image problem.”
The ultimate power couple
It’s not unusual for married couples to work for the same politician. In the small circles of Washington politics, it’s how many people meet their spouses. But in the annals of presidential politics, few unelected couples have become as influential as Bauer and Dunn — practically furniture in the modern Democratic Oval Office.
People know they can depend on them in the trenches.
Minyon Moore, former white house political director
While rising in their respective fields, often working for the same bosses in Democratic politics, they have created a vast network of allies, amassed tens of millions of dollars, served in prestigious roles and influenced the political fortunes and decision-making of many of the Democratic Party’s most prominent figures.
Dunn and Bauer have built parallel careers that periodically intertwine. He was the general counsel and she was the communications director in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee nearly 35 years ago. Married in 1993, they worked together on Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign, with Bauer playing the role of Al Gore in mock debates. Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader whose operation provided much of the talent for Obama’s team, counted Bauer and Dunn among his advisers. And, of course, they have played crucial roles for Obama and Biden on the campaign trail and in the presidency.
There’s a simple reason for their success, according to allies: They can be trusted to handle difficult tasks competently and with discretion.
“People know they can depend on them in the trenches,” said Minyon Moore, who served as political director in Bill Clinton’s White House and has come to know Dunn and Bauer through decades of work in Democratic politics. “For Joe Biden, what he gets from both of them is history — they’re veterans, they’re unflappable, they don’t need the limelight. ... People cannot be penalized for wanting to be true public servants. They do not have to do this.”
SKDK, where Dunn was a partner, is one of the top PR firms in Washington, with a list of high-powered clients spread across corporate America, Democratic campaigns and the nonprofit world. And in a city whose currency is power, Dunn’s long career in the top echelons of politics has led to success even outside of government.
When Dunn filed a financial disclosure late last year, as she returned to the White House in a full-time position, it showed an investment portfolio with an estimated value of between $18 million and $46 million that she would be required to divest.
