The Home GOP’s a lot ballyhooed investigation into former President Joe Biden’s alleged cognitive decline has largely ended with a thud.
In a brand new report launched Tuesday morning, the Home Oversight and Authorities Reform Committee’s Republican majority claims to have discovered proof that senior Biden White Home aides “exercised the authority of the former president” and hid indicators of Biden’s psychological deterioration. The truth is, the probe concluded with the necessity for solutions to extra questions than any look of a smoking gun.
Between June and September, Home Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) convened depositions or transcribed interviews with greater than a dozen former Biden aides, together with chiefs of workers Ron Klain and Jeff Zients. The Trump administration waived govt privilege for witnesses as a part of an effort to clear the best way for his or her cooperation. Even so, a number of of them invoked their Fifth Modification rights towards self-incrimination.
The Home Oversight GOP is citing, partly, this barrier to getting info from the witnesses as proof of an inside cover-up round Biden’s well being. The committee chair is now asking President Donald Trump’s Division of Justice to look into every considered one of Biden’s govt actions, with Comer arguing the state of Biden’s psychological colleges couldn’t be accounted for on the time of signing.
“[B]arring documentation establishing a record of President Biden’s decision-making, the Committee deems void President Biden’s executive actions that were signed using the autopen,” Comer wrote in a letter to Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi. “[A]nd the Committee determines that action by the Department of Justice is warranted to address the legal consequences of that determination.”
The request may lengthen the administration’s campaign towards a few of Trump’s greatest political rivals, although the efforts to overturn Biden’s govt actions might be blocked by the courts. Presidents even have for years relied on the autopen to signal supplies as a regular observe, and Biden has maintained that his choices had been his personal.
The Republican report recommends that the District of Columbia Board of Drugs examine whether or not Biden’s White Home physician, Kevin O’Connor, failed his duties as a doctor by deceptive People as to the president’s well being. As proof, the report pointed to O’Connor’s refusal to cooperate with the committee’s probe: O’Connor cited his Fifth Modification rights and physician-patient privilege in declining to reply questions. Republicans additionally cited O’Connor’s choice to forgo a cognitive examination for the president.
Lastly, Comer is asking DOJ to analyze O’Connor in addition to two senior aides — Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini — who additionally cited the Fifth Modification to establish whether or not their conduct within the former administration was felony.
“Dr. O’Connor’s lack of transparency demonstrated while serving as the active White House physician and not testifying before this Committee to answer relevant, pointed questions about President Biden’s ability to carry out the duties of the presidency is untenable for a licensed medical professional tasked to diagnose, heal, and protect the official in the highest elected office,” Comer wrote in a letter to the D.C. Board of Drugs’s chair.
The letter added that, if crucial, O’Connor ought to be sanctioned by the Board of Drugs.
Comer’s management of the probe into Biden’s psychological decline comes at a fortuitous time in his personal political profession: The Kentucky Republican is weighing a bid for the state’s governorship in 2027 — a race the place Trump’s endorsement may carry appreciable weight.
He beforehand co-led an impeachment inquiry into Biden that culminated in a hundreds-of-pages lengthy report that concluded his household “engaged in a global influence peddling racket from which they made millions of dollars.” And though the report argued Biden’s actions constituted “impeachable conduct,” Home GOP management by no means arrange an impeachment vote on the Home ground.
Biden’s weak efficiency within the June 2024 presidential debate set off a cascade of questions over his psychological acuity, in the end forcing him out of the presidential race. However even after he dropped his reelection marketing campaign and largely stepped apart from public life, Republicans continued to press the celebration’s management for overlaying up Biden’s potential well being failings.
Comer took on the cost of placing collectively a assessment of the previous president’s use of the autopen. Trump, individually, launched the administration’s personal probe into whether or not Biden’s former White Home aides contributed to a cover-up of his decline and approved illicit use of the autopen.
“With the exception of the RIGGED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020, THE AUTOPEN IS THE BIGGEST POLITICAL SCANDAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY!!!” Trump posted on Fact Social this summer time.
The Justice Division and representatives for Biden, O’Connor, Bernal and Tomasini didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Among the many highlights of Comer’s report is that Zients informed the committee that Biden had been knowledgeable of his suggestion that he ought to contemplate dropping out of the presidential race and Biden’s nationwide safety adviser, Jake Sullivan, thought Biden ought to drop out after the June debate.
Moreover, Zients disclosed that Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, took half in some White Home discussions round pardons. Biden would go on to pardon the youthful Biden, who was going through his personal authorized struggles.
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