Congressional investigators looking into Biden’s cognitive decline while in office, its cover-up, and its alleged exploitation behind the scenes are set to continue peeling the onion later this month.
The House Oversight Committee grilled former Biden White House Domestic Policy Council Director Neera Tanden last week, gleaning some insights into what was going on behind closed doors toward the end of the Biden presidency. Tanden also confirmed that she was “responsible for handling the flow of documents to and from the president,” and she was “authorized to direct that autopen signatures be affixed to certain categories of documents.”
The committee will next hear from Ron Klain on July 24; Steve Ricchetti on July 30; Mike Donilon on July 31; Bruce Reed on Aug. 5; and Anita Dunn on Aug. 7, an Oversight aide told Politico.
Ron Klain is among the “gatekeepers” identified by Ed Martin, Department of Justice pardon attorney and director of the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group, who were apparently “dominant characters in the White House.”
‘He had been isolated from domestic politics by a WH team unplugged from hill Dems.’
Klain was a senior adviser to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign who subsequently served as the former president’s White House chief of staff from 2021 to 2023.
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Klain, who lobbied to place Tanden in the White House as a senior adviser and whose own adviser repeatedly hosted Alexander Soros at the White House, was identified early on by the Daily Beast as Biden’s bridge to the hardcore leftist wing of the Democratic Party.
“Progressives are a big part of our party and making sure their voices are heard here at the White House is a big part of my job,” he told the Daily Beast.
Klain returned to the fold last year to help Biden prepare for his disastrous June 27, 2024, debate with President Donald Trump. He told Politico earlier this year that when he returned, he found Biden had been “out of it because he had been [sidelined].”
“He had been isolated from domestic politics by a WH team unplugged from hill Dems,” said Klain.
Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) appears particularly interested in Klain’s recognition of Biden’s decrepitude, noting in a June 4 letter to the former White House chief of staff, “According to an interview, you cut short the debate prep ‘due to the president’s fatigue and lack of familiarity with the subject matter’ and said that the former president ‘didn’t really understand what his argument was on inflation.’ The scope of your responsibilities — both official and otherwise — and personal interactions within the Oval Office cannot go without investigation.”
Steve Ricchetti was another name Ed Martin volunteered when discussing his investigation into the questionable autopen pardons issued in the final days of the Biden White House.
‘She has this perch where she spans the overall strategic plan for (Biden) and for the White House.’
Ricchetti was a counselor to Biden who previously served as chairman of his 2020 presidential campaign. Citing a 2024 Wall Street Journal report, Comer noted that extra to serving as one of Biden’s closest advisers, Ricchetti was “part of a group of insiders who implemented a strategy to minimize ‘the president’s age-related struggles.'”
Mike Donilon, an adviser to Biden since the 1980s who served as chief strategist of the former president’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns, was also among the grand Biden-decrepitude strategists named in the Wall Street Journal’s report.
Donilon appears to be on Comer’s radar partly because of his newfound “willingness to speak about the former president’s cognition” but also because of the scope of his “responsibilities — both official and otherwise — and personal interactions within the Oval Office.”
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Lindy Li, a former DNC fundraiser and National Finance Committee member, recently told Fox News Digital that Donilon, whom Vanity Fair claimed was with Biden “more than almost anyone,” was one of the former president’s “puppet masters.”
Li suggested that in addition to Donilon, the shadow presidency consisted of Ricchetti, Bruce Reed, Anthony Bernal, and Anita Dunn.
Anita Dunn, both on Martin’s list of “gatekeepers” and in the Journal report, long served as an adviser to Biden, first from January until August 2021, then again from May 2022 until August 2024.
Numerous White House alumni and then-current staff, along with lawmakers and administration officials, told CNN in June 2023 that Dunn, the apparent genius inside Biden’s circle who embraced the “Dark Brandon” meme — a mutated spin-off of the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme, itself a euphemism for the phrase often chanted at sporting events during the Biden presidency, “F**k Joe Biden” — had “a hand in nearly all aspects of [Biden’s] political life.”
“She has this perch where she spans the overall strategic plan for (Biden) and for the White House, and also communicates outward with the political apparatus of the (Democratic National Committee) and the campaign and tries to keep the entire Joe Biden enterprise swimming in the same direction,” a then-White House aide told CNN.
Bruce Reed, though omitted from both Martin’s list of “gatekeepers” and the Journal’s list of insiders, as well as Donilon and Ricchetti were sometimes referred to in the White House as “the poobahs,” “the grey hairs,” and “the triumvirate,” reported Axios.
Whereas Donilon and Ricchetti were particularly engaged in politics, Axios indicated that Reed was “nearly always by Biden’s side of the road” and focused on policy.
Comer suggested that it was worth hearing from Reed, granted he was one of “five White House staffers who were ‘effectively family’ to the former president.”
‘I can’t stress to you how much power he had at the White House.’
Anthony Bernal — the senior adviser to former first lady Jill Biden and characterized as one of the most influential people in the White House and a key member of Biden’s so-called politburo in Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson’s new book, “Original Sin” — was scheduled to appear for a voluntary transcribed interview on June 26. However, he refused to appear after learning that President Donald Trump was taking a page out of his predecessor’s book and waiving executive privilege for the Oversight Committee’s investigation.
Former Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg ruffled some feathers when it was revealed he told an undercover Project Veritas reporter that Bernal “had an enormous amount of power” behind the scenes in the White House.
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Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Deterrian Jones, a former staffer in the Biden administration’s Office of Digital Strategy, echoed this understanding, claiming Bernal was a “shadowy, ‘Wizard of Oz’-type figure” who “wielded an enormous amount of power.”
“I can’t stress to you how much power he had at the White House,” added Jones.
Comer subpoenaed Bernal last week, compelling his testimony for a deposition on July 16.
As was the case with Tanden, President Donald Trump has deprived members of this cadre of Biden insiders of the shield of executive privilege, thus requiring them to provide lawmakers with “unrestricted testimony.”
‘The cover-up of President Biden’s obvious mental decline is a historic scandal.’
Comer also sent letters to former Biden White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, former White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates, former Biden White House spokesman Ian Sams, and the Biden White House’s last chief of staff, Jeff Zients, on Friday, requesting they turn up for interviews.
Comer hinted at some of his suspicions in the letters. For instance, he told Jean-Pierre:
You served as the White House press secretary for President Biden during the last two years of his administration and were a trusted inner-circle confidante as you were promoted to senior adviser to the president in October 2024. You were not only near the president daily, but you were “alongside the ranks of the president’s top confidantes like senior advisers Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, and Bruce Reed.”
“The cover-up of President Biden’s obvious mental decline is a historic scandal. The American people deserve to know when this decline began, how far it progressed, and who was making critical decisions on his behalf,” Comer said at the outset of the investigation. “Key executive actions signed by autopen, such as sweeping pardons for the Biden Crime Family, must be examined considering President Biden’s diminished capacity. “
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Anthony bernal, James comer, Steve ricchetti, Bruce reed, Mike donilon, Joe biden, President, Autopen, Exploitation, Coverup, Crime, White house, Politics
