Who Really Ran Biden’s Presidency? House Republicans To Investigate
Rep. James Comer – “I’m bringing in Joe Biden’s senior staff for transcribed interviews. Here’s who we are starting with …. “
Leaked audio from former President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur in October 2023 about his mishandling of classified documents made it clear that Biden was utterly unfit to execute his duties as commander in chief.
As we all heard for ourselves, Biden struggled to recall key facts — the date of his son’s death, Trump’s 2017 inauguration, even when he left office as vice president. He couldn’t explain how or why classified documents ended up in his home. His responses were riddled with long pauses as he rummaged through his clouded memory for answers. And as the world would witness just eight months later during his disastrous debate with President Donald Trump, the interview offered a stark preview of just how far his cognitive decline had progressed, and why his continued presence in the Oval Office posed a serious risk.
The question is no longer, “Was Biden unfit for office?” The real question is: why was he allowed to remain there?
Some claim to be stunned by Biden’s jaw-dropping performance in the Hur interview. But in reality, it was anything but shocking. Many of us recognized — and reported on — the subtler, yet unmistakable, signs of cognitive decline from the moment he launched his campaign in April 2019. And we watched that decline accelerate over the next six years.
After the pivotal June 2024 debate, denial was no longer an option. His subsequent withdrawal from the race — and the understanding that he would soon leave office — brought a measure of relief. Still, the fact that a man in such obvious decline held the most powerful position in the United States for so long remains deeply troubling.
The leaked audio has brought all that shock roaring back into focus — and exposed as lies the claims from administration insiders who insisted they saw no signs of the former president’s decline.
Released in the wake of a wave of tell-all books detailing Biden’s condition — and how those closest to him worked to hide it from the public — the audio has Democrats now saying it’s time to move forward.
But Rep. James Comer (R-KY), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, isn’t ready to let it go. After listening to the leaked audio Friday night, Comer announced he would be calling in senior Biden administration officials for transcribed interviews.
According to Comer’s post on X, the first four former officials to be questioned will be Director of the Domestic Policy Council Neera Tanden, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini, senior advisor to First Lady Jill Biden Anthony Bernal, and Deputy Assistant to the President (and senior advisor) Ashley Williams.
Spinning for CNN is one thing — lying to Congress is another matter entirely.
🚨BREAKING🚨
Who was really running the Biden White House?
I’m bringing in Joe Biden’s senior staff for transcribed interviews. Here’s who we are starting with:
Neera Tanden
Annie Tomasini
Anthony Bernal
Ashley WilliamsThey propped up a man who was unfit to lead. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/vjMJumzGd7
— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) May 17, 2025
Now that it’s clear Biden was incapable of carrying out his duties, the obvious question is: who was actually running the country? Just as pressing: who had access to the Biden autopens that have drawn headlines in recent months? And why did no one invoke the 25th Amendment when it became undeniable that he was no longer fit to serve?
In a review of the forthcoming Biden administration exposé Original Sin, authored by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, The Atlantic’s Tyler Austin Harper highlights a striking claim: an unnamed source, described only as “a political insider,” tells the authors, “Five people were running the country. And Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”
Although it’s unclear whether those five individuals are specifically identified in the book — which is set to be released Tuesday — Harper notes that “they are not clearly named in the public summary.” Still, it’s unlikely House investigators will have much difficulty identifying them, or questioning why they may have violated the solemn oath they took to support and defend the Constitution.
Harper also cites a passage in which an anonymous aide confides to the authors: “We attempted to shield him from his own staff, so many people didn’t realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023.” He concludes that the book “leaves little doubt that his enablers, at least, understood what they were doing.”
While Tapper and Thompson likely had not intended it, Original Sin could end up serving as a roadmap for congressional investigators. Perhaps negotiations for a movie deal should wait — unless they’re ready to make a lot of enemies first.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn or X.
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Comments
They better include Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti.
I wonder if the Lubyanka is available for the “interviews.”
ok
and then what???
just focus on ending as much of the blmplo welfare state as possible
If it can be shown that Biden wasn’t running things, then several possibilities open up. First, all those autopen pardons become invalid.
Then you have the “Cabal” that was running things. Criminal prosecutions aren’t just likely, but would have to happen.
Now the question would be, what did Kamala Harris know and when did she know it?
Play this right and it will gut the Democrat party.
“Now the question would be, what did Kamala Harris know and when did she know it?”
Let’s face it, the answer that particular question is almost always “very little.”
Harris may have been the reason why the 25th Amendment wasn’t invoked. Both incompetent and unlikable, no Dem operative worthy of the name would have wanted to propel her into the Oval Office as she is a walking disaster area.
Nothing I’ve read shakes my belief that it was the plan all along to get the potato elected and then “25” him. But when the Dem hierarchy in D.C. was able to see Harris up-close and personal, they realized that would have been a mistake. Instead, they decided to manage Joe’s situation as the best solution to the predicament they created by nominating a potato. Hopefully now they’ll be made to suffer for their bad decisions as they made the country suffer for them.
Indeed, the only reason Harris did not take over on January 21, 2023 — thereby giving her a day under two years appointed, allowing her to be elected (in rigged or clean elections) twice for a 1-day-shy-of-10 years run — was because of what they saw of her in those first 2 years.
The whole shithouse of cards fell apart in July 2024. They were so lost, too late to primary, too late to step aside for an open convention. I can’t help but smile. Demtards.
I don’t think pardons are automatically invalid. However, if there are any lies in the attestations on the paperwork, they may be invalid. For example, if the paperwork says it was approved and signed by the President in Washington, during a week he was in Delaware.
the scotus would have to rule on the autopen..pardons
and it would easily be a 5-4 no changing of the pardons
Judges would need to be immediately removed, especially that rocket scientist Ketengie.
Comer is a great talker. Action? Not so much.
as are his colleagues Jim Jordan nad Ted Cruz
And then? Why nothing will happen. The usual Republicans will howl in outrage and the democrats will just point at them and laugh knowing full well the Republicans don’t have the balls to do anything about it.
The same people who ran Barky’s.
I put Soros up at the top as the strategist behind them, but there were middle manager maoists working in the White House handling the day-to-day affairs.
Like we’ll really find out? Right
Like we’ll really find out? Right
You can say that again!
Seth Rich is unavailable for comment. Asking now only increases the potential discussion group with Seth. This “inner circle”… the functional central committee is formed of true believers… Lenin’s “fellow travelers”. Nothing will shake them free to tell the truth. The Poliburo… well… that’s bigger and BHO and friends (even Hill and friends) run the show. Most Dems could care less as they know that “the check is in the mail”. They all pulled off the biggest theft in US political history…
Unless and until people go to prison, it’s all just political theater – totally meaningless.
Go to prison for what? No one in his Cabinet had the guts or patriotism to invoke the 25th and remove him and Congress refused to do their job by impeaching him.
Conspiracy to defraud the United States?
Let me ask you, if you were a congressman and knew that by removing Biden from office that Harris would become POTUS, would you do it? What advantage would there be in having a braying, incompetent jackass at the helm instead of a potato? I’m not sure Biden’s removal would have been an improvement of the situation for the country. As things worked out, the Dems helped get Trump re-elected, and that’s a good thing. It’s possibly the best possible scenario considering the alternative scenarios were so bad.
And NO ONE will go to prison. The Uniparty protects themselves.
And this is why we are hearing the pre-packaged chorus of “let it go” this week in the MSM. They knew this was coming.
Sort of takes you back to the time of … move on .. dot org …
and the classic,
“What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Took them long enough.
Bring in Shumer, Pelosi, “the Leader”, and dr jill too to interrogate.
IMO this is a vastly worse scandal than Edith Wilson likely running the country after his stroke. We have the 25th Amendment to deal with this specific situation. This party appears corrupt to its core. My guess is that they were going to try to push Joe across the finish line once more and then Harris would take over. Meanwhile, they would have more time for dishing untold billions out the door to their friends for Climate Change scams and to NGOs doing all sorts of worthless garbage. Joe’s debate performance messed up their plans and Democrat citizens got a candidate dumped on them with no primary or public process whatever, a back room deal.
Meaningless theatre. We ALL know you aren’t going to do jackshit about it.
How about you stop grandstanding and actually do something about the border, or deporting illegals, or cutting the freaking budget.
I am so SICK of these ‘investigations’.
Maybe the GOP will issue a Sternly Worded Letter (TM)!
That’s a tall order itself!
I am very interested in a question I’ve seen raised about the use of the auto-pen for signing the last-second pardons. The argument is that if Biden was not mentally competent and someone used the autopen in his stead, then the pardons are not valid. Generally, it could be presumed the pardons were at least done at Biden’s instruction. However, I think that cannot be presumed in this case.
The problem is proving it. Could Biden be forced to testify before congress on this matter? I would imagine that he would insist that he did sign the pardons, but questioned strategically I think it could be demonstrated publicly that he doesn’t actually have any true memory of them and couldn’t recite a single substantial item from any of the documents.
Could the pardons even possibly be challenged even with such a demonstration? My guess is that the Supreme Court would never allow such an idea to be presented to them…. so: No.
They will now state that Biden is too far gone to be a good historian. Dementia has somehow push him over the edge and also… all of the other people will have similar memory lapses if they wish to remain alive and wealthy. Any redress will require something off the books… just like they did.
Could it be that the people who handled Biden over his term in office are using the prostate cancer diagnosis to forestall questions about who was running the government and, more specifically, who was in charge of the auto pen?
The Hur tapes are absolutely proof that it was not FJB.. The pardons are in question, and all of a sudden full stop—Joe has metastatic prostate cancer.
To quote Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” No one wishes cancer on anyone, and we pray for Biden. However, the timing of his cancer diagnosis seems suspicious.
Not necessarily the diagnosis itself, which could have happened a year or more ago, but the timing of the public _release_ of the diagnosis is certainly suspicious.
Oh, look, squirrel!
What purpose would be served by having Joe testify before Congress? He would be the first person to do so in decades who could honestly reply “I don’t remember” to every question, and everyone would be believe him. (Even the Dems, while in the next breath they’d tell us he was “sharp as a tack” right up to his last day in office.)
For me the $20M question is why did he (or the puppet masters) not only agree to the debate but actually suggest it, and so early? Sure it would have looked bad had he declined to debate Trump, but the fallout would have been less disastrous than his performance, and to his inner circle predictably so. Whoever pushed for Joe to participate in the early debate wanted him out.
Are you talking about the Chicago Saviour—Obama?
Yes, that would certainly make sense. He tells Susan Rice or Valerie Jarrett it needs to happen. As always, leaves no fingerprints.
He knew Joe was going to lose. And he knew that Joe and Jill loved the trappings of the presidency too much to willingly leave the ticket. And of course, Barry thought with Joe out of the way the Democrats would put up a viable candidate. Not Harris, of course.
Actually it’s kinda funny. Barry had it all figured out, then ended up losing in his own game of duplicity to the guy with lettuce for brains, when Biden unexpectedly immediately passed the baton to Harris.
Jill Ed.D’s revenge for Obama and the rest forcing Joe to drop out of the presidential election. If Joe wasn’t going to be allowed to run for a second term as president she was bound and determined to have Joe pick the worst candidate possible to replace him. Joe did and the rest is history.
Yeah. Hell hath no fury like Dr. Jill being denied more covers of Vogue Magazine.
I think the debate gambit backfired on them.
First, they expected to get Trump to back out based on the conditions they wrongly felt would help Biden if he accepted. They expected Trump to be combative as he had been in other debates, and Trump somewhat uncharacteristically didn’t get goaded into arguments with the moderators and was able to give Biden the rope to hang himself with.
The early timing of the debate put it right in the middle of all of the lawfare against Trump. You had the civil judgement in the E Jean Carroll trail, the ‘death penalty’ judgement in the James real estate valuation case, and the felon conviction in Bragg’s recordkeeping/campaign finance case, plus Jack Smith coming up fast with the J6 and Mar-A-Lago documents cases. That was supposed to force Trump to devote all of his time to court appearances, or give Biden an out to claim he couldn’t “platform a convicted felon/insurrectionist”. The problem was that Trump kept getting more popular the more he was attacked in court and a number of the cases, particularly Jack Smith’s, turned into protracted wrangling over the novel legal interpretations with no clear outcome against Trump.
Or…..
The reasons you listed for the having the early debate was the explanation Barack suggested that Valerie and/or Susan use to justify having the early debate to Biden’s inner circle and campaign staff, when in reality Barry knew Biden would choke in the debate and needed him gone from the nomination sooner rather than later.
You are more likely correct. They knew the drooling pedophile was going to be far more difficult frauding over the finish line this time (obama was grooming Kelly in AZ to be the nominee), purposely fucked with his drug cocktail he was receiving just so he WOULD crash & burn, and could be replaced with a more plausible ‘winning’ candidate. But BiteMe (or doctor first lady doctor Jill BiteMe) came up with the genius plan of endorsing that cackling whore immediately. The party was truly screwed at that point. If they’d kicked her to the curb, bye bye black and broad vote. They had no choice.
Now they padded her ballot count by about 15 million in the weeks leading up to election day. But the 3am ballot dumps were aborted (though they did try in Bucks Co., PA). They gamed the scenario and it wasn’t gonna fly with the American people. It would have created a bigger set of problems. They plausibly fraded the pedo in as a half-assed ‘elder statesman’, and enough of the retard electorate swallowed it. But a word salad cackling whore? That was problematic.
Oh no! We have Slackjaw Comer going after another “Investigation.” What became of all his Biden family corruption investigations and his Hunter investigations? NOTHING. But he recently attacked Bondi because she had not released the Epstein files and said they were probably destroyed. He is so full of himself that he is now attacking other Rs that don’t do what he expects with no self-reflection at all. As they say in Texas, “All hat and no cattle”.
Bondi has a good or at least plausible reason for not releasing the Epstein stuff immediately. There is so much child porn involved that it’s tricky to release anything with so many victims still out there many of whom do not want to be identified.
BS! Bondi doesn’t have to release anything in order to indict anyone still living that is on video with an underage woman
The comment was about releasing them not on indicting anyone.
You are wrong because to indict a person, you have to present evidence, and the defense has to be given that evidence. If it has been tampered with in any way, it won’t be admissible. This is not the slam dunk people think it is.
We don’t know what cases have gone before the grand jury. Bottom line, they’re going to have to be mass arrests, or people will get spooked and hightail it to non-extradite countries. Give it another year or so. If no arrests are forthcoming, we may then consider Trump 2.0 a failure in that regard.
“Although it’s unclear whether those five individuals are specifically identified in the book”
And since Tapper wrote it, even if it contained their full names, addresses, and phone numbers, it would be worthless as evidence.
Why do you think it would be worthless?
Because Tapper has less credibility than Jon Lovitz’s Tommy Flanagan.
I’ve told my children for Biden’s entire presidency that he wasn’t running the country, but that an unelected committee of Democrats was. It’s nice to vindicated, but I want the entire legacy media establishment burned to the ground over this. They certainly aided and abetted.
He listened to that audio Friday night and not the night it was released?
Just goes to show that all of Congress pretended not to know about Biden’s mental state during his term. But now they demand answers when it’s too late for anybody to do anything about it.
But at least it does put his face on camera so he can plead with his constituents for campaign donations, so all is not lost.
Determining the master of the auto-pen should be easy. Toto revealed the Wizard of Oz without any interviews or grandstanding.
Most of the Country may admit that what happened in the last administration was wrong. The main question will be what was illegal and who will be blamed. Name what was done that is criminally illegal. Then prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I say that will end up being a very heavy, if not impossible lift. That would then shift over to civil law. Who will be satisfied if some fourth tier aid is found culpable for any civil infraction?
That leaves everything people see as wrong simply becomes unethical and no one will go to jail for that. That administration, and every previous administration was filled with very smart, probably very experienced lawyers who know exactly how far they could push and who would fall on the sword if it came to that.
Now we get to our feckless right wing legislators who love hearings and strongly worded letters. Sure, their inaction during the Biden administration and now the Trump administration may cost a few seats, but they don’t care because McConnell showed how rich everyone can get by campaigning against what the democrats are doing, but not effectively stopping them.
DOGE clearly showed the Country what a uniparty can create and sustain for years with the hidden kickbacks from well named and well funded NGOs. Even with that direct evidence, those appropriated tax dollars will not be cut in the future, just reassigned to a different laundering tool.
I don’t see a resolution here. The politicians will walk, their staffers as well, the courts are weapons to hide and protect the system, and our elections are the only voice that the people have, but are now so compromised that by design, no one can prove who won legitimately.
Comer proved he was and is worthless when he talked non-stop about the Hunter Biden investigation.
Where did that go?
NOWHERE.
Swell.
Should only take 10-12 years to get to the bottom of this.
Comer’s bucking for Grassley’s record.