Two top Biden aides set to testify in probe of Biden mental decline
The committee has scheduled interviews with former Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti and former senior adviser Mike Donilon for Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. In a departure from some previous high-profile witnesses, the two have signaled they will voluntarily sit for them. As of Tuesday afternoon, the committee had not issued subpoenas compelling their appearances.
Several Biden aides have declined to cooperate with the committee's investigation, prompting the panel to subpoena their appearances. They then invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during the closed-door meetings.
Earlier this month, three Biden aides – White House physician Dr. Kevin O'Connor, former assistant to the president and senior adviser to the first lady Anthony Bernal and former special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office operations Annie Tomasini – pleaded the fifth in the face of questions from the panel.
Invoking the Fifth Amendment is typically done to avoid answering specific questions, and though it can be perceived by the public as a way of avoiding accountability, the US Supreme Court has long regarded the right against self-incrimination as a venerable part of the Constitution.
Still, a number of Biden aides have sat for voluntary sat for interviews with the panel. Former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain, for example, told the committee last week that Hillary Clinton had expressed concerns to him in 2023 that Biden's age was an issue the campaign hadn't dealt with effectively, and that national security adviser Jake Sullivan told him in 2024 after the presidential debate that Biden wasn't as effective as he once had been, a source familiar with the matter previously told CNN.
Klain told the committee that he believed Biden had the mental sharpness to serve as president and he saw no reason to doubt Biden's mental acuity, another source said.
A Clinton spokesman did not dispute Klain's account, but said Clinton was concerned with how the question of Biden's age was being handled politically in light of the attacks and questions he was facing.
As with Klain, Neera Tanden, the former White House Director of the Domestic Policy Council, and Ashley Williams, former special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office Operations, sat for transcribed interviews.
According to a source familiar with her interview, Williams told the committee she believes that Biden was in command the night of the debate and was fit to be president, including now.
The source said Williams stated she 'did not recall' many times during her five-hour interview to several questions, including whether teleprompters were used for Cabinet meetings, if there were discussions about Biden using a wheelchair, if there were discussions about Biden undergoing a cognitive test, if she discussed Biden declining physically or mentally, if she ever had to wake Biden up, and how she got involved in his 2020 campaign. The source said that Williams would not say a good memory was an important trait for working at the White House.
An attorney representing Williams did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening.
The committee is expected transcribe interviews with additional high-level aides next week, including with former deputy chief of staff for policy Bruce Reed on Tuesday and former senior adviser to the president for communications Anita Dunn on Thursday.
Other former aides expected to testify in the coming months include: former special assistant to the president and senior adviser in the White House Counsel's Office Ian Sams on August 21; former deputy assistant to the president and senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates on September 5; former assistant to the president and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on September 12; and former chief of staff Jeff Zients on September 18.
Arlette Saenz contributed to this report.
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Chicago Tribune
21 minutes ago
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After a reference to Trump's impeachments is removed from a Smithsonian, questions of history arise
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In China, for example, references to the June 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square are forbidden and meticulously regulated by the ruling Communist Party government. In Soviet-era Russia, officials who ran afoul of leaders such as Josef Stalin disappeared not only from the government itself but from photographs and history books where they once appeared. Jason Stanley, an expert on authoritarianism, said controlling what and how people learn of their past has long been used as a vital tool to maintain power. Stanley has made his views about the Trump administration clear; he recently left Yale University to join the University of Toronto, citing concerns over the U.S. political situation. 'If they don't control the historical narrative,' he said, 'then they can't create the kind of fake history that props up their politics.' In the United States, presidents and their families have used their power to shape history and calibrate their own images. Jackie Kennedy insisted on cuts in William Manchester's book on her husband's 1963 assassination, 'The Death of a President.' Ronald Reagan and his wife got a cable TV channel to release a carefully calibrated documentary about him. Those around Franklin D. Roosevelt, including journalists of the era, took pains to mask the effects of paralysis on his body and his mobility. Trump, though, has asserted far greater control — a sitting president encouraging an atmosphere where institutions can feel compelled to choose between him and the facts, whether he calls for it directly or not. 'We are constantly trying to position ourselves in history as citizens — as citizens of the country, citizens of the world,' said Robin Wagner-Pacifici, professor emerita of sociology at the New School for Social Research. 'So part of these exhibits and monuments are also about situating us in time. And without it, it's very hard for us to situate ourselves in history because it seems like we just kind of burst forth from the Earth.' Timothy Naftali, director of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda from 2007 to 2011, presided over its overhaul to offer a more objective presentation of Watergate — one not beholden to the president's loyalists. In an interview Friday, he said he was 'concerned and disappointed' about the Smithsonian decision. Naftali, now a senior researcher at Columbia University, said that museum directors 'should have red lines' and that he considered one of them to be the removal of the Trump impeachment panel. While it might seem inconsequential for someone in power to care about a museum's offerings, Wagner-Pacifici says Trump's outlook on history and his role in it — earlier this year, he said the Smithsonian had 'come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology' — shows how important those matters are to people in authority. 'You might say about that person, whoever that person is, their power is so immense and their legitimacy is so stable and so sort of monumental that why would they bother with things like this ... why would they bother to waste their energy and effort on that?' Wagner-Pacifici said. Her conclusion: 'The legitimacy of those in power has to be reconstituted constantly. They can never rest on their laurels.' Hajela and Italie write for the Associated Press.
