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. The only thing I know of Kamala being in charge of the southern border,” Comer 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’s inquiry for this report by publication time. However, earlier this month, Ian Sams, a White House spokesman and senior adviser to the White House counsel’s office, issued 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 a public 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.
The legacy media largely has been complicit in trying to protect Biden from scrutiny over his mental faculties, Comer said.
“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.”
Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a former White House physician with direct knowledge of Donald Trump’s wounded right ear, disputes FBI Director Christopher Wray
‘s questioning of whether a bullet struck the former president in the assassination attempt.
Wray said that “there’s some question” whether Trump got hit by “a bullet or shrapnel” during the July 13 assassination attempt
in testimony Wednesday to the House Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s investigation of the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Jackson released a statement Friday saying there is “absolutely no evidence” anything other than a bullet injured Trump’s upper right ear
.
“During the Congressional Hearing two days ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested that it could be a bullet, shrapnel, or glass,” Jackson wrote. “There is absolutely no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet. Congress should correct the record as confirmed by both the hospital and myself. Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”
Jackson said he has treated many gunshot wounds throughout his 20-year career as an emergency medicine physician in the Navy and as a combat physician in Iraq.
He wrote that he can “completely concur” with the initial assessment and treatment provided to Trump at Butler Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for a gunshot wound to the ear.
Wray testified to the House Judiciary Committee
that Trump’s would-be assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, used a semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle with a collapsible stock during the shooting. Trump, surrounded by Secret Service agents, exited the rally with blood dripping down his face.
“I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, that hit his ear,” Wray testified Wednesday. “As I sit here right now, I don’t know if that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, also could have landed somewhere else.”
A photograph taken during the shooting by The New York Times’ Doug Mills shows a bullet flying directly by the right side of Trump’s head just moments before he began bleeding.
Crooks fired eight rounds, killing former volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore and wounding two other rally attendees, authorities said. The gunman climbed onto the roof of a building unoccupied by authorities and 130 feet away from the rally stage.
The Secret Service and the FBI
told lawmakers Wednesday that authorities noticed Crooks approximately 50 minutes before Trump came onstage. One source told senators that Crooks was spotted with a rangefinder, while others said they saw him standing on the rooftop with a firearm about 20 minutes before bullets were fired.
Bipartisan questions about how the incident occurred led former Secret Service
Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign from the agency Tuesday following a tense hearing Monday before the House Oversight Committee.
Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and ranking member Jamie Raskin,D-Md., issued a joint statement Monday following the hearing calling for Cheatle’s resignation and stating that she “failed to provide answers” about the “stunning operational failure” during the rally.
MSNBC’s Michael Steele and Ari Melber both raised questions about the details of Trump’s wounded ear. Steele said July 16 that “a lot of questions” surround Trump’s injury, while Melber suggested the bandage on the ear was a “political quest” to gain sympathy and clout.
In a July 17 post on Threads, MSNBC anchor Joy Reid suggested that flying glass may have injured Trump.
The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a former White House physician with direct knowledge of Donald Trump’s wounded right ear, disputes FBI Director Christopher Wray
‘s questioning of whether a bullet struck the former president in the assassination attempt.
Wray said that “there’s some question” whether Trump got hit by “a bullet or shrapnel” during the July 13 assassination attempt
in testimony Wednesday to the House Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s investigation of the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Jackson released a statement Friday saying there is “absolutely no evidence” anything other than a bullet injured Trump’s upper right ear
.
“During the Congressional Hearing two days ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested that it could be a bullet, shrapnel, or glass,” Jackson wrote. “There is absolutely no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet. Congress should correct the record as confirmed by both the hospital and myself. Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”
Jackson said he has treated many gunshot wounds throughout his 20-year career as an emergency medicine physician in the Navy and as a combat physician in Iraq.
He wrote that he can “completely concur” with the initial assessment and treatment provided to Trump at Butler Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for a gunshot wound to the ear.
Wray testified to the House Judiciary Committee
that Trump’s would-be assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, used a semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle with a collapsible stock during the shooting. Trump, surrounded by Secret Service agents, exited the rally with blood dripping down his face.
“I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, that hit his ear,” Wray testified Wednesday. “As I sit here right now, I don’t know if that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, also could have landed somewhere else.”
A photograph taken during the shooting by The New York Times’ Doug Mills shows a bullet flying directly by the right side of Trump’s head just moments before he began bleeding.
Crooks fired eight rounds, killing former volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore and wounding two other rally attendees, authorities said. The gunman climbed onto the roof of a building unoccupied by authorities and 130 feet away from the rally stage.
The Secret Service and the FBI
told lawmakers Wednesday that authorities noticed Crooks approximately 50 minutes before Trump came onstage. One source told senators that Crooks was spotted with a rangefinder, while others said they saw him standing on the rooftop with a firearm about 20 minutes before bullets were fired.
Bipartisan questions about how the incident occurred led former Secret Service
Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign from the agency Tuesday following a tense hearing Monday before the House Oversight Committee.
Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and ranking member Jamie Raskin,D-Md., issued a joint statement Monday following the hearing calling for Cheatle’s resignation and stating that she “failed to provide answers” about the “stunning operational failure” during the rally.
MSNBC’s Michael Steele and Ari Melber both raised questions about the details of Trump’s wounded ear. Steele said July 16 that “a lot of questions” surround Trump’s injury, while Melber suggested the bandage on the ear was a “political quest” to gain sympathy and clout.
In a July 17 post on Threads, MSNBC anchor Joy Reid suggested that flying glass may have injured Trump.
The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
