Former White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor is expected to face tough questioning from House Republicans over his alleged role in concealing President Joe Biden’s cognitive issues, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) told The New York Post.
“Dr. Kevin O’Connor will absolutely, positively be implicated in the cover-up of this. He is a massive, massive part,” said Jackson, a medical doctor who previously worked in the White House Medical Unit under three presidents and now chairs the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee.
“I guarantee you Kevin O’Connor has medical information that the American people don’t have,” Jackson continued. “He was probably putting President Biden on lots of medications that we have no clue of — in efforts to try to treat his cognitive decline.”
“I’ve known him for a long time; he’s part of the Biden family. He would do or say anything to cover up and protect that family, regardless of what it meant professionally for him,” Jackson said. “This could not have been covered up without him — and Jill Biden — in particular.”
Jackson claimed that a congressional panel would investigate whether Biden’s presidency was effectively being run by others for a significant portion of his time in office, although there has been no confirmation that any such probe is actively underway.
O’Connor, who spoke to The Post just four days after Biden withdrew from the 2024 race and described his mental health as “excellent,” had previously been invited to speak before the GOP-led House Oversight Committee in 2023. It’s unclear whether he responded to the request.
Jackson also stated that Republicans in the House want to bring in doctors and specialists who may have evaluated Biden, who was 82 years old during his re-election bid, for possible conditions like “Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and whatever else.”
According to visitor logs, neurologist Dr. Kevin Cannard from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center visited the White House eight times between July 2023 and March 2024. O’Connor later clarified that only three of those visits involved Biden and were part of his annual checkups.
Asked last year whether the visits should raise any alarms, O’Connor told The Post: “No, he’s good.”
Earlier in 2023, the White House shared that O’Connor did not believe Biden needed a cognitive test. That announcement came even as Biden publicly confused the names of deceased and living foreign leaders. Special counsel Robert Hur later declined to prosecute him, citing that a jury would likely see Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
After Biden’s performance in the July 2024 debate, neurologist Dr. Tom Pitts told NBC News, “I could’ve diagnosed him from across the Mall,” noting that Parkinson’s is “one of the easier movement disorders to diagnose” and highlighting the president’s “rigidity,” “shuffling gait” and “slow movement.”
Despite serving as Biden’s top physician for four years, O’Connor—whom the president often referred to as “Doc”—never took questions from the press in the briefing room about the president’s condition.
O’Connor was succeeded by Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, who had also served as Trump’s doctor during part of the 45th president’s term, following Jackson’s tenure.
Jackson said congressional investigators will focus on those who he believes deliberately misled the public about Biden’s health.
“I was saying that this man was not fit to be president when he was candidate Joe Biden in 2020 — and I said that over and over and over and God knows how many times I was on TV,” Jackson said, “talking about [how] this man is not in control.”
“Not only do they know now — but they knew, you know, two or three years ago,” Jackson added. “These people are cashing in on, you know, telling the truth now and writing these books and stuff that’s coming out of the woodwork.”
Since Biden left office, more revelations have surfaced about Democrats’ internal concerns regarding his mental sharpness, including contingency plans if he died in office and growing alarm over how “out of it” he appeared in the days leading up to his June 27 debate against Trump — which longtime adviser Ron Klain labeled a “disaster.”
After that debate, First Lady Jill Biden made headlines when she congratulated her husband onstage, saying: “Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question! You knew all the facts!”
The conservative Heritage Foundation reviewed Biden’s signatures on several last-minute pardons, including those for Dr. Anthony Fauci and members of the House January 6th Committee, and concluded that several were signed using an autopen.
Sources inside the Biden White House later told The Post that one of the president’s aides may have independently chosen to use the autopen for official documents — a claim that was contested by other staffers.
Some of the pardons issued for members of Biden’s family may have also had implications for O’Connor, who had been involved in business discussions with Biden’s brother James. The conversations reportedly centered on a now-defunct rural hospital chain that was later targeted by both the SEC and DOJ for fraud.
James Biden received a pardon covering potential criminal activity spanning from January 1, 2014, to January 20, 2024 — Biden’s final day in office.
“Any of the things that he signed or put into law, are they legitimate?” Jackson asked. “That’s a great question.”
“Was he even aware of what was going on, much less actually, you know, in favor of the stuff he signed?”
{Matzav.com}
