The House Oversight and Accountability Committee will hold hearings on a suspected “cover up” surrounding former President Biden’s cognitive functions and autopen usage in office, after audio surfaced this week of his 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur.
“Clearly, from that interview, which was many, many months prior to the heavy use of the autopen, Joe Biden wasn’t capable of making decisions. He wasn’t coherent,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the committee, said Friday in an interview on Fox News’s “Hannity.”
A transcript of Hur’s two-day interview was made public last year, but the Biden White House blocked the Justice Department from releasing the audio recording. Hur closed his investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents, concluding that he was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The newly leaked audio, published by Axios, more fully illustrated Biden’s long pauses and lapses in memory.
Comer announced Friday that his committee’s efforts to review Biden’s cognitive function near the end of his presidency would resume because of lingering questions about the ex-president’s use of autopen to sign a flurry of presidential orders, including preemptive pardons for some of Trump’s political foes, during his final stretch in office.
“There are serious concerns that President Biden lacked the mental capacity to authorize those actions,” the Kentucky Republican told guest host Jason Chaffetz, a former GOP lawmaker representing Utah. “The American people are done being lied to.”
“We’re going to bring the truth into the light, and starting next week, those involved in the cover-up will begin to be put on notice,” he added.
Comer previously sought the Hur interview audio, as well as meetings with former top White House aides, through subpoenas last year, but he said the Biden administration “obstructed” the probe and “defied” the legal requests.
“This is one of the greatest scandals of our generation and Americans are demanding answers,” he said Friday. “Now that Biden’s top enablers can no longer hide behind the power of the presidency, we’re continuing our investigation to expose the truth.”
The Oversight panel wants to hear from top Biden aides Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal and Ashley Williams, and has requested a transcribed interview from the former president’s doctor Kevin O’Connor.
