New book exposes how top Biden comms staffer was 'tip of the spear' covering up Biden's cognitive decline
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By Andrew Miller, Cameron Cawthorne
Published May 22, 2025
A new book sheds light on former White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates' role in defending President Joe Biden's mental acuity, which the book alleges was done without the White House staff having the full picture of the president's actual condition.
"Some of Bates's colleagues believed that Biden's inner circle took advantage of his loyalty and told him to deny things they knew were true," Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson wrote in their new book "Original Sin," detailing the inner workings of the Biden White House and attempts to downplay concerns about the president's mental and physical fitness.
"He, along with most of the press team, rarely met with the president and didn't have firsthand knowledge of the president's wherewithal," the book continued. "They relied on senior staff for answers. Still, risking his own credibility, Bates willingly became the White House's tip of the spear when it came to fighting off any reporting on Biden's acuity."
Outside of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Bates was perhaps the most prominent face of the public-facing defense of Biden during his administration, often handling requests for comment from reporters and is mentioned about half a dozen times in the book.
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The book goes into detail about an alleged "modus operandi" from the Biden campaign and the White House for "attacking any journalist who covered any questions about the president's age" with the goal to "shame journalists and create a disincentive structure for those curious about the president's condition."
"To answer the question on everyone's minds: No, Joe Biden does not have a doctorate in foreign affairs. He's just that f---ing good," Bates posted on X following a Biden press conference two weeks after the debate performance that many believe was the beginning of the end of his campaign.
The book looked back on that remark and stated that it "reflected the views of the Politburo but among professional Democrats, it became an instant legend for its sycophancy and tone-deafness."
Bates dismissed the book's narrative about him, telling Fox News Digital it "is distorted, stretching select facts while excluding others."
A former Biden White House staffer also came to Bates' defense, telling Fox News Digital, "This gets important facts wrong."
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"Bates served as a senior spokesperson who met with and traveled with the President, including in the Oval and on Air Force One, staffing him around the country and on Capitol Hill. That's public information. He served as a point person in the press office on major legislative and political issues," the former White House staffer continued. "He was known for being respectful and considerate if a colleague didn't want to do an interview for a challenging story, whether it was about policy or anything else."
The book details one specific instance of the White House successfully killing a story when "weeks" before the explosive Wall Street Journal story detailing concern about Biden's decline came out in June, Steve Ricchetti, former White House deputy chief of staff, strongly denied claims that the president was slipping to another journalist.
"[A] reporter with a different national news outlet had been hearing from White House aides that behind the scenes the president was having serious and disturbing moments, forgetting names and facts, sometimes seeming seriously confused at meetings," the book read.
"The reporter reached out to members of the White House press office, which not only aggressively—and angrily—disputed her reporting but also took the unusual step of having Steve Ricchetti call her," the book said. "He talked to her off the record, so she couldn't use any of what he said or even attribute it to 'a White House source.' But he told her that everything the others were saying was false, and that he was at the meetings as a counselor to the president."
According to Tapper and Thompson, the Biden White House was going all out trying to control the perception of his health.
"The message from the White House was clear, this reporter believed: If she went forward with the story from anonymous aides, the White House would aggressively dispute it, on the record, and portray her as a liar," the book reads. "The tacit threat worked."
The book has sparked intense reactions from both sides of the aisle, leading many to slam the media's coverage of Biden's mental acuity and blame the media and Biden's team for covering up the facts of the situation.
Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden's cognitive decline and his inner circle's role in covering it up.
Others have pushed back against the framing of the book, including Naomi Biden, Joe Biden's granddaughter, who delivered a scathing rebuke to the new book, calling it "silly" and "political fairy smut."
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CNN, Tapper's network, has also faced pushback for its promotion of the book, including from "The View" and Daily Show host Jon Stewart, who took issue with the network promoting the book under the backdrop of Biden's recent cancer diagnosis.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a Biden spokesperson said, "There is nothing in this book that shows Joe Biden failed to do his job, as the authors have alleged, nor did they prove their allegation that there was a cover up or conspiracy."
"Nowhere do they show that our national security was threatened or where the President wasn't otherwise engaged in the important matters of the Presidency. In fact, Joe Biden was an effective President who led our country with empathy and skill."
Fox News Digital's Hanna Panreck and Rachel del Guidice contributed to this report Print Close
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