Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who leads the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on the Inquiry, has reached out to two former senior officials from the Biden administration. He’s seeking insights on what the White House knew regarding President Biden’s health amid claims that they may have deliberately obscured his cognitive and physical decline.
“We’ve sent letters to over 20 senior management staff, asking for interviews,” he mentioned. “These are individuals who frequently interacted with the president.”
Johnson also noted that his team reached out to Vice President Kamala Harris and various cabinet members, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and former Biden aide Jeff Zahns, requesting their testimonies.
He indicated that he might consider issuing subpoenas if those invitations go unheeded. “We’ll first ask them politely,” he stated. “Hopefully, they’ll agree to come in for an interview.”
The senator is primarily looking to pose “basic questions” to former staff members. “This doesn’t need to be an extensive, all-day interview,” he explained. “Just give me an hour of your time. We have fundamental questions to ask.”
“They owe it to the American public,” he asserted.
Johnson hasn’t dismissed the option of subpoenas if he faces resistance, adding that he doesn’t require support from certain Democrats, like Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), to go that route.
Meanwhile, both President Biden and former First Lady Jill Biden have strongly refuted allegations that the former president’s inner circle concealed serious health concerns during his final term.
Earlier this month, Biden mentioned on The View that he might have defeated Trump if he had remained in the race for November 2024, illustrating the pressure he faced from Democrats and donors to run a substantial campaign following a poorly received debate performance against Trump in June.
Biden characterized his debate night as “a bad, bad night,” but insisted it didn’t indicate significant cognitive or health issues. “There’s nothing to back that up,” he remarked.
Jill Biden chimed in on the program, stating that the critiques didn’t capture the reality of her husband’s daily efforts. “They had no idea how hard Joe worked every day. He would rise early, work throughout the day, read my book in the evening, stay on the phone, and engage with his team,” she explained.
Speculation about the genuine extent of Biden’s health problems has gained traction following reporting in a new book by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios. It suggests that during discussions of a second term, Biden had contemplated the need for a wheelchair.
The book titled “The Original Crime: President Biden’s Decline, Concealment, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” asserts that Biden appeared markedly different upon arriving as president in June 2024. Tapper and Thompson noted that Biden seemed to have aged significantly since their last encounter in December 2022.
