Flashback: Karine Jean-Pierre declared 'there is no cover-up' of Biden's health after he dropped out of race
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By Gabriel Hays
Published May 22, 2025
As new reports allege that former President Biden's handlers secretly knew that he was declining physically and mentally before his 2024 campaign withdrawal, former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre consistently denied Biden's frailty to the media.
During a press briefing just days after Biden withdrew from his re-election campaign in July 2024, Jean-Pierre sparred with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, refuting his suggestion that party figures and many in the media covered up the president's cognitive decline until it wasn't possible anymore.
"First of all, there's been no cover-up," Jean-Pierre told Doocy, adding, "I want to be very clear about that."
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"I know that that is a narrative that you love to –" the White House official said in response to the Fox News reporter, who had asked, "So, who ordered White House officials to cover up a declining president?"
Jean-Pierre's denial of a cover-up has come under more scrutiny following recent bombshell reports alleging that Biden insiders acknowledged the former president's decline privately while strategizing on how to deny it to the media.
Axios reporter Alex Thompson told News Nation Now that while researching for his new book "Original Sin" – co-authored with CNN anchor Jake Tapper – a Biden insider admitted "yes, we deserve blame for X, Y, Z. We were hiding [Biden]."
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Thompson added that the same insider told him the media were to blame for how much they could get away with in denying Biden's decline, stating, "Listen, the media deserves some blame too. Like we were sort of amazed at some of the stuff we were able to spin."
The book also claimed Biden's inner circle kept many White House officials in the dark about the former president's mental and physical state. Former Biden staffers alleged that presidential insiders urged people like former White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates to deny Biden's health issues when the media asked about them.
"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," Tapper and Thompson wrote, elsewhere adding, "[Bates], along with most of the press team, rarely met with the president and didn't have firsthand knowledge of the president's wherewithal. They relied on senior staff for answers."
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"Original Sin" also reported that the Biden campaign and White House had a "modus operandi" 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."
Concerns over what was known about Biden's health decline while he was president have only mounted since he left office, as he was recently diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.
The U.S. Department of Justice also recently released the audio recording of his 2024 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, providing evidence of Biden's cognitive issues that were present months before he left the presidential race.
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Jean-Pierre and representatives for Biden did not immediately reply to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Print Close
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