‘The cover-up isn’t holding’: Ex-Biden aides appear before lawmakers amid probe into former president’s mental fitness for office

Two of former President Joe Biden’s close aides are appearing before federal lawmakers this week amid a congressional probe into Biden’s mental faculties and use of the autopen.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform scheduled an interview with former Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti on Wednesday, and will interview former senior advisor Mike Donilon on Thursday. 

“Two more of Biden’s closest aides are lawyered up and sitting down with us for transcribed interviews as our probe into his mental fitness moves forward,” the committee wrote on X on Wednesday. “The cover-up isn’t holding.”

Ricchetti was adamant in his interview that during all of Biden’s time in office, he believed the former president was “fully capable” of exercising his executive duties. “Neither I, nor anyone else, usurped President Biden’s constitutional duties, which he faithfully and fully carried out each and every day,” he said, according to a statement obtained by The Hill. 

Ricchetti further insisted there was no coordinated effort to hide Biden’s mental state from the public. He said he was “not aware of any effort by any member of the White House staff to usurp the President’s authority to make decisions or to sign important documents without his knowledge.”

For nearly a year, the Oversight Committee has been investigating the role former Biden staffers and White House insiders could have played in “possibly usurping authority from former President Joe Biden” and potentially “hiding his rapidly worsening mental and physical faculties,” lawmakers wrote in a June letter requesting Ricchetti’s appearance.

The committee said it is seeking to find out who was making decisions behind the scenes and exercising the executive’s authority, “possibly without former President Biden’s consent.”

Ricchetti, as one of Biden’s closest advisors, had an “eye-witness account of former President Biden’s decline,” the letter added. “According to a report, you were part of a group of insiders who implemented a strategy to minimize ‘the president’s age-related struggles.’” The committee noted that if White House aides were attempting to hide Biden’s condition, Congress might need to take legislative action.

In a similar letter issued to Donilon, who will appear before the committee on Thursday, lawmakers said the former senior advisor was reportedly to blame for “erecting a wall between the former president and senators ‘to shield Biden from bad information.’”

Both Ricchetti and Donilon are interviewing with the committee voluntarily, rather than being subpoenaed. Several other former aides are expected to testify in August and September, CNN reported, while others have invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. 

Biden has insisted he was the one making decisions during his presidency, including decisions about executive orders, signing legislation, and pardons, and calling any suggestion otherwise “ridiculous and false.”

His comments came in response to an executive order by President Donald Trump in June, which directed the counsel to the president and Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether there was a conspiracy to “deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the President.”