Zients also testified that the president’s troubled son Hunter was involved with pardon discussions at the close of Biden’s presidency.
Former Biden White House chief of staff Jeff Zients admitted in closed-door testimony that his boss, former President Joe Biden, had worsening speech stumbles and memory issues as he aged.
Zients testified Thursday that Biden’s speech stumbles increased and Biden’s difficulty remembering names and dates worsened over time, a person familiar with his interview told National Review.
Zients sat for a closed-door interview with House Oversight Committee lawmakers as part of the committee’s investigation into how the Biden White House handled the former president’s deteriorating mental capability. He stated that Biden’s decision-making capabilities slowed during the administration, the person familiar said. Decisions that initially required three meetings eventually needed four.
The Oversight Committee is specifically investigating whether Biden White House officials used the presidential autopen in the final weeks of Biden’s term to deliver pardons without his full authorization. The Trump White House is also probing the matter for potential criminal conduct.
Zients testified that the president’s troubled son Hunter was involved with the pardon discussions and sat in on a few meetings at the end of the Biden administration. Controversially, Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter in December ahead of his sentencing on tax and gun charges. The sweeping pardon absolved Hunter Biden of any potential criminal conduct from January 2014 to December 2024, covering the entire period of his foreign business dealings and tax-evasion issues.
Zients’s testimony contradicts claims Hunter Biden made in a recent podcast appearance about his role in the Biden administration. The younger Biden denied becoming his father’s de-facto chief of staff as his political career fell apart. In the last two years of Biden’s term, Hunter said he only visited the White House twelve times.
Like many Biden officials, Zients attributed President Biden’s poor debate showing to him having a cold. But Zients admitted to seeing Biden with a cold before and said he did not act that way previously.
After the debate, Zients recalled then-national security adviser Jake Sullivan agreeing with him that it made the most sense for Biden to step aside. He also recalled senior cabinet officials Gina Raimondo, Antony Blinken, and Dennis McDonough having concerns about Biden.
As he prepared to become White House chief of staff, Zients recounted former First Lady Jill Biden speaking with him about ensuring President Biden got more rest and did not get over-scheduled.
Some Biden officials brought in to testify for the Oversight Committee’s investigation have invoked their Fifth Amendment right instead of giving testimony. Those officials include Biden’s physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who gave the president a glowing review in 2024 before his political career fell apart. Zients testified that he spoke about Biden’s age with O’Connor and two other senior officials who pleaded the Fifth, Annie Tomasini and Anthony Bernal, the person familiar said.
Tomasini and Zients spoke about tailoring Biden’s schedule to accommodate for his age. This meant giving Biden more time to read and be with family, and limiting his walking and stair climbing. Zients had similar discussions with Bernal about the settings, frequency, and interactions during Biden’s public appearances.
After Biden’s disastrous debate, Zients suggested to O’Connor that Biden have a medical workup that included a cognitive exam. O’Connor was involved with managing Biden’s age-related appearance issues.
Zients’s testimony is particularly valuable to the committee given his proximity to Biden during the second half of his presidency, his senior role in the autopen approval process, and his presence in multiple meetings where Biden allegedly verbally approved categorical pardons, including an early December meeting with Biden and other aides regarding federal death-row inmate commutations.
“COS Jeff Zients got POTUS’s verbal approval on the following decision during a 12/11 decisional meeting with POTUS, Jeff Zients, Ed Siskel and Bruce Reed,” senior Zients aide Rosa Po wrote in an email to White House staff on December 21, 2024, according to documents obtained by National Review.
“P approved the commutation of the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on death row to life without the possibility of parole,” Po continued.
The death-row cases are particularly controversial given internal communications suggest the Biden White House didn’t consider victim family testimony before the former president verbally approved 37 inmate commutations, according to intra-White House and Justice Department emails previously reported by National Review.
Other internal communications obtained by National Review suggest that senior pardon officials at the Justice Department were not given an advance list of the thousands of drug-related inmate commutation recipients until shortly before the White House made the list public on January 17.
Zients is the latest high-profile member of the Biden administration to testify for the investigation. His predecessor, Ron Klain, testified in July and acknowledged Biden’s memory worsened throughout his presidency, as NR previously reported. Klain noted that Biden became less energetic and more forgetful, but maintained his belief that Biden was capable of holding the presidency.
Two Biden loyalists, former senior officials Mike Donilon and Steve Richetti, similarly defended Biden’s mental capacity in their interviews with the Oversight Committee. Both men were part of the Biden White House’s “politburo” of senior officials who made decisions on his behalf, as journalists Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper chronicled in their bestselling book Original Sin.
Last week, former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre failed to recall who gave her the talking points she used to deflect questions about Biden’s worsening mental faculties. She was one of several Biden spokespeople to speak to the Oversight Committee for the investigation.
Earlier this month, former senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates, a Biden loyalist, dismissed concerns about Biden’s mental capacity as a media invention. Another spokesman, Ian Sams, recalled hardly encountering Biden in person despite his high-profile role defending the president.
Biden has dismissed the possibility his staffers used the autopen without his knowledge and said he made every decision of his presidency.
The president’s advanced age ultimately became his undoing after his disastrous debate performance in June 2024. Biden’s poor showing prompted a Democratic Party revolt that culminated in his decision to drop out of the presidential race. He threw his weight behind former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to President Trump in November 2024 in an election where Republicans reclaimed a 53-47 Senate majority.