Former senior adviser Mike Donilon and former counselor to the president Steve Richetti both claimed Biden was mentally capable of being president.
Two of former President Joe Biden’s closest advisers defended his mental capacity during closed-door testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
Former senior adviser Mike Donilon and former counselor to the president Steve Richetti both asserted to the House Oversight Committee that Biden was mentally capable of being president during interviews earlier this week, a source familiar told NR.
Donilon, who made $4 million from Biden’s 2024 campaign and would have hauled in another $4 million if Biden had won, argued that congressional Democrats and pundits overreacted to Biden’s disastrous 2024 debate performance.
Defending Biden further, Donilon thought the president’s communication skills got better throughout his tenure. But Donilon did admit Biden lacked a commanding presence and could stumble over his words. Donilon voiced frustration at the situation and knew people would not look past the visuals they saw of Biden.
Like Donilon, Richetti said he believed Biden had the ability to be president and Biden performed on a daily basis. He thinks Biden could have won the 2024 election but admitted that Biden’s age was a political issue. In Richetti’s telling, Biden made “common mistakes” and they did not increase in frequency from the time of his vice presidency. Richetti even compared Biden’s slip ups to former President Bill Clinton’s when he was 45 years old. A defensive and combative interviewee, Richetti emphasized his closeness to Joe Biden and noted his personal relationships with Biden’s wife Jill and son Hunter.
Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July 2024 following a sustained revolt from Democratic lawmakers and pundits because of his horrendous debate showing. He paved the way for former Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic nominee without a competitive primary.
The House Oversight Committee is investigating the extent to which Biden’s aides hid his mental condition from the public before the primetime debate. The panel is specifically concerned about whether Biden’s staff made decisions using the presidential autopen without his authorization.
Donilon and Richetti are the latest top Biden aides to testify behind closed doors about his mental capacity and how the Biden administration handled it. In the bombshell book Original Sin, both men were part of Biden’s “politburo,” a group of senior Biden officials with extraordinary decision making power. Original Sin by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN anchor Jake Tapper chronicled the ways top officials handled Biden’s worsening mental condition during his presidency.
Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain testified last week and acknowledged Biden’s memory worsened over the course of his presidency, but Klain still believed Biden was fit to govern. Several other top Biden officials invoked their Fifth Amendment right instead of answering questions, including Biden’s physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor. Additional members of the “politburo” and other prominent Biden officials are set to testify for the investigation over the coming weeks. The Oversight Committee’s investigation is the highest profile congressional probe into the topic of Biden’s mental acuity.
President Donald Trump has ordered the Justice Department to investigate whether Biden’s aides conspired to hide his condition from the public. Comer has left the door open to working with the Justice Department by sending criminal referrals if he uncovers illegal conduct.
Biden has dismissed the possibility that the presidential autopen was used without authorization and rejected the premise of the investigation. His son Hunter recently lambasted Democratic elites for their pressure campaign to get the elder Biden out of the race.
Harris ended up losing the 2024 election to Trump, whose victory carried the GOP to a 53-47 Senate majority and put Democrats into the political wilderness. Some observers have put a significant amount of blame onto Biden for the 2024 outcome because he decided to run for another term despite his advanced age.