A shocking new report from the House Oversight Committee claims that a number of Joe Biden’s official actions “cannot all be deemed his own,” asserting that his closest advisers “went to great lengths to prop up” the president amid growing signs of mental and physical decline, the NY Post reports.
Based on over a dozen interviews with White House staff, the 91-page document describes how Biden’s “inner circle” supposedly “meticulously stage-managed” his presidency—curating his schedule, limiting his contact with lawmakers, and scripting even minor events. “These steps ranged from addressing President Biden’s makeup, clothing, schedule, the number of steps President Biden could walk or climb, the amount of time President Biden needed to read and to spend with his family,” the report says, “keeping cabinet meetings to a minimum, eliciting ‘direction’ from Hollywood on the State of the Union and other events, and using teleprompters even at small, intimate events.”
One of the most alarming details involves Biden’s use of the autopen. Investigators allege that numerous executive orders and pardons signed with the device lack “approval traceable to the president’s own consent,” rendering them invalid. Biden himself acknowledged to the New York Times in July that an autopen was used for 25 pardons and commutations between December 2024 and January 2025. The only exception during that time, the report notes, was the handwritten pardon for his son Hunter.
Jeff Zients, Biden’s chief of staff at the end of his term, admitted during a transcribed interview that he didn’t even know who operated the autopen. “I do not,” he said when asked directly. Zients maintained, however, that “there were good processes in place,” though he conceded he wasn’t present for pardon deliberations and was briefed only afterward. He further revealed that “Hunter Biden weighed in on some of those ‘family discussions’ of pardons ‘towards the end, the very end of the administration.’”
The committee emphasized that “the authority to grant pardons is not provided to the president’s inner circle. Nor can it be delegated to particular staff when a president’s competency is in question.” Even if delegation were permissible, the report says, “it would have to be expressly delegated by President Biden himself.”
Biden fired back in June: “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
The Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, has called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to open a criminal probe into Biden’s actions and those of aides accused of participating in a “cover-up.” Among those named were deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor, and Jill Biden’s chief of staff, Anthony Bernal — all of whom invoked the Fifth Amendment when subpoenaed.
When asked whether he had ever been told to misrepresent Biden’s medical condition, Dr. O’Connor refused to answer. The report portrays him as “a key figure in the coverup,” claiming he issued “grossly misleading medical assessments” to conceal the president’s deterioration. “His refusal to answer questions about the execution of his duties as physician to the president — combined with testimony indicating that Dr. O’Connor may have succumbed to political pressure from the inner circle, influencing his medical decisions and aiding in the cover-up — legitimizes the public’s concerns that Dr. O’Connor was not forthright in carrying out his ultimate duties to the country.”
O’Connor’s lawyers, David Schertler and Mark MacDougall, responded that “physician patient privilege and the physician’s ethical duty of confidentiality require that Dr. O’Connor refuse to testify about any aspect of his care and treatment of President Biden.” Former Obama physician Jeffrey Kuhlman has disagreed, stating that such questions wouldn’t have violated medical privacy.
Comer declared that “the Biden Autopen Presidency will go down as one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history.” Yet Justice Department memos have long maintained that the president’s clemency powers remain valid even when executed via autopen.
According to the report, Biden’s annual medical exams included neurological evaluations, though none of the results were ever released and he was never given a cognitive test. Each year, O’Connor simply sent a short summary to Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declaring Biden healthy and free of Parkinson’s. Jean-Pierre — who once claimed the president “passes a cognitive test every day” — declined to explain a January 2024 meeting between Biden and a Parkinson’s specialist.
After Biden’s halting June 27, 2024 debate against Donald Trump, senior aides — including Zients and Anita Dunn — discussed whether the president should finally undergo cognitive testing. “I do recall the communications team brought forward, led by [Biden senior adviser] Anita [Dunn], the question of whether the President should have a cognitive test when he did his physical,” Zients told investigators. Dunn explained that “we did not have any concern about his ability to pass those tests. We did not think it would help politically.” Bruce Reed recalled O’Connor dismissing such exams as “meaningless.”
Hollywood figures like Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg were enlisted to coach Biden for the March 2024 State of the Union address in a bid to dispel public doubts. Around the same time, Special Counsel Robert Hur decided not to charge Biden for willfully mishandling classified documents, writing that a jury would view him as “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
Following that report, Biden skipped the customary Super Bowl interview. Dunn, O’Connor, and top adviser Mike Donilon allegedly had financial incentives to keep Biden in the race, with Donilon projected to earn up to $8 million if Biden secured a second term.
Despite claims of decline, some aides described occasional bursts of vigor — such as after a NATO summit in Brussels when Biden entertained staff all night aboard Air Force One. But none could back up Hunter Biden’s assertion that his father’s poor debate showing was caused by Ambien. Only Ron Klain, the first White House chief of staff, conceded that the event was disastrous. “We’re f–ked,” Klain recalled thinking. “I certainly knew that we had a big political problem as a result of [the debate].”
The report noted that “not one of the Committee’s 14 witnesses was willing to admit that they ever had a concern about President Biden being in cognitive decline,” suggesting that aides either ignored or rationalized his issues. “It is unclear whether these Biden aides were attempting to be deceptively euphemistic about President Biden’s cognitive decline, or whether they had so deceived themselves that they actually believed there to be a meaningful distinction that the American people were simply worried that President Biden was old, not that he was in cognitive decline.”
The White House dismissed the entire probe. “This investigation into baseless claims has confirmed what has been clear from the start: President Biden made the decisions of his presidency,” a spokesperson said. “There was no conspiracy, no cover-up, and no wrongdoing. Congressional Republicans should stop focusing on political retribution and instead work to end the government shutdown.”
Attorneys for O’Connor, Bernal, and Tomasini did not return requests for comment. Their lawyer, Jonathan Su, insisted that invoking the Fifth Amendment “is not evidence of wrongdoing” and that “there is no actual evidence of wrongdoing by Ms. Tomasini, and President Biden has already confirmed that he made all decisions concerning the grants of clemency at the end of his term.” Su also pointed out that “there is an ongoing federal criminal investigation into this matter by the Department of Justice,” noting that “any reasonable person would seriously consider an invocation of their Fifth Amendment rights.”
Schertler and MacDougall, representing O’Connor, echoed that sentiment: “The totality of the circumstances surrounding this Committee’s investigation leave Dr. O’Connor no choice but to decline to answer questions.”
{Matzav.com}
