Biden Isn’t Running Again, but House Investigates Who’s Running Government

President Joe Biden is out of the running for a second term, but Congress still wants answers about who’s been running the executive branch and the “cover-up” of Biden’s cognitive condition. 

“We’ve identified the four people in the White House who we believe were the primary parties involved in the cover-up, three staffers as well as the [White House] physician,” House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told The Daily Signal on Thursday, the day after Biden’s Oval Office address about not seeking reelection. 

“The White House is doing what they do with all of our investigations, they’re obstructing, but there has clearly been a cover-up,” Comer added. 

The oversight committee seeks interviews with Dr. Kevin O’Connor, physician to the president. 

Earlier this month, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she had talked with O’Connor, who told her that Biden had not been evaluated since February. Biden said in a call with Democrat governors that he was just checked out by a doctor and everything was fine.  

The committee subpoenaed three senior White House staffers for depositions: Annie Tomasini, deputy White House chief of staff; Ashley Williams, special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office operations; and Anthony Bernal, assistant to the president and senior adviser to first lady Jill Biden.

“We expect to interview those employees,” Comer told The Daily Signal. 

In less than a month after Biden’s poor debate performance June 27 against challenger Donald Trump, many Democrats piled on to push Biden out of the presidential race. Most came close to admitting what many Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators have speculated about in questioning Biden’s cognitive capacity. 

“The question remains, who’s been calling the shots? Is it Hunter Biden?” Comer said, naming the president’s son, who recently was convicted on a gun charge and faces trial in the fall on tax charges. “Was it these three staffers?”

Comer added that Americans should know if there is a “shadow government.” He questioned what Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden endorsed to succeed him, knew regarding the president’s condition.

“Was Kamala in charge? Who was in charge? I don’t think Kamala is in charge,” Comer said. 

T”he only thing I know of Kamala being in charge of is the southern border,” he joked.

An Axios story early this month named those top White House staffers as helping to “create a cocoon” around Biden.  

“Some Biden aides believe those closest to the president have created a cocoon around him that initially seemed earnestly protective, but now appears potentially deceptive in the debate’s aftermath,” Axios reported. “They particularly focus on Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini, the first lady’s top adviser Anthony Bernal, and longtime aide Ashley Williams, who joined the deputy chief of staff’s office when Tomasini ascended to the role earlier this year.”

The White House didn’t respond to multiple requests from The Daily Signal for comment by publication time. However, earlier this month, Ian Sams, a White House spokesman and senior adviser to the White House counsel’s office, issued a statement after the initial subpoena

“Like everything Congressman Comer has done over the past year, these subpoenas are a baseless political stunt intended for him to get media attention instead of engage in legitimate oversight,” Sams said in that statement. 

“His partisan attacks on the president have been discredited, and now he continues to debase the House by weaponizing subpoenas to get headlines instead of seeking information through the proper constitutional process,” Sams continued, referring to Comer. 

The legacy media largely has been complicit in trying to protect Biden from scrutiny of his mental faculties, Comer told The Daily Signal.

“Joe Biden has been sick for a long time, and everyone knows. And when the media was trying to get him out of the race to put their hand-picked successor, Kamala, in the race, they admitted that he’s been sick for a long time,” the Kentucky Republican said.

“I think a lot of the media knew he’s been sick for a long time, and they were part of the cover-up.”