Report: Biden aide would have made $4M if Trump lost
Donilon was the latest Biden adviser to appear behind closed doors before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee. The panel is investigating the former president's fitness for office amid President Donald Trump 's claims that Biden's aides were running the country using an 'autopen,' a device that scrawls the president's signature.
Biden left office in January at age 82 - a record for an American president - and a number of books have suggested his cognitive decline was worse than what the White House was telling the American people. Donilon - who had worked alongside the Democratic president since the 1980s - left the White House in early 2024 to help run Biden's reelection campaign.
His salary, which was much higher than the $300,000 being paid to campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon, led to resentment among other aides and Democrats , according to Axios' Alex Thompson and CNN 's Jake Tappers book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again . It also gave Donilon a reason for wanting Biden to stay in the 2024 presidential race. Axios reported that Donilon told lawmakers that he believed Democrats made too big of a deal about Biden's disastrous June 2024 debate performance against now-President Donald Trump.
That debate appalled Democrats and started the wave of calls for then 81-year-old Biden to bow out. He did so less than a month later, handing the Democratic nomination over to Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the November election to Trump. In his testimony to the House Oversight Committee, Donilon admitted Biden experienced some wear and tear, but pushed that he was up to the job.
In his opening statement Donilon said, 'every president ages over the four years of a presidency and President Biden did as well, but he also continued to grow stronger and wiser as a leader as a result of being tested by some of the most difficult challenges any president has ever faced,' according to Axios. 'I thought that experience was enormously valuable for the nation,' the top political aide added.
A spokesperson for Biden declined to comment to the Daily Mail. Former Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti also spoke to lawmakers this week. Last week, Biden's first Chief of Staff Ron Klain appeared. Additional aides are expected to appear on Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.
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