Painful to Watch: Top Biden Aide Admits to $4 Million Bonus if Biden Had Won Reelection
The fact that he was so lavishly compensated for his services is not the issue. The point is that a potential $4 million bonus is a powerful incentive to coverup a candidate’s deteriorating cognitive condition.
On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee released a report detailing its investigation into efforts by top Biden administration aides to coverup former President Joe Biden’s deteriorating mental acuity. The report, titled The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House, can be viewed here.
The Committee also released a video of its July interview with Biden’s top aide Mike Donilon and it was something else.
In the painful to watch clip below, Donilon haltingly admitted that, in addition to his $4 million campaign consulting fee, he would have received a $4 million bonus had Biden won reelection.
A House investigator asked, “Just to be clear, would the amount of pay you received for your role in the campaign, would that have changed depending on how far into the race President Biden made it?”
After a five second silence, Donilon began his fitful response: “Uh. … My, uh, my sense is that, um, that a … the um [six second pause] in my view, that the money was [seven second pause] that the, it was a guarantee from the campaign, that a … we had a negotiation and that’s my memory of the agreement.”
A second investigator asked, “Would you have received a bonus, depending on the way the campaign went. Was that a possibility?”
Again, he hesitated. “Um [seven second pause] how the campaign went.”
She rephrased the question. “Were there any circumstances in which you would have received a bonus?”
“Yes, there was.”
“What were those circumstances?”
Softly, Donilon replies, “Joe Biden would have been reelected president of the United States.”
“What would the bonus have been?”
“I believe it would have been $4 million.”
“In addition to the $4 million that you were already paid?”
“Yes,” he replies.
We reported the potential $8 million payday back in July but the video of his interview is new and striking. https://t.co/aq9ukQ1D77
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) October 28, 2025
Following Donilon’s July interview, a person familiar with his testimony told Axios reporter Alex Thompson about the “$8 million potential payday.” But as Thompson noted, “The video of his interview is new and striking.” And he’s right.
According to The New York Times, Donilon’s relationship with Biden dates back to 1981. He has remained one of Biden’s most loyal and trusted confidants for decades. When Biden became vice president in 2009, Donilon became one of his top aides. He was the chief strategist of Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and upon his victory became a senior advisor.
Donilon clearly has extensive and valuable experience in politics and has been a great ally to Biden. The fact that he was so lavishly compensated for his services is not the issue.
The point is that a potential $4 million bonus is a powerful incentive to coverup a candidate’s deteriorating cognitive condition just long enough to drag him over the finish line — great for Mike Donilon, but a disaster for America.
Among the blizzard of 2024 election autopsies released this year was 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, published in July by veteran journalists Josh Dawsey (The Wall Street Journal), Tyler Pager (The New York Times), and Isaac Arnsdorf (The Washington Post).
A New York Times book review described an episode that occurred shortly after Biden’s disastrous June 2024 debate with then-candidate Donald Trump in which “Democratic aides, desperate to convince Biden to face the music, schemed to have the political talk show host Joe Scarborough deliver the tough love.”
According to the book, “Staffers believed Biden would see the information if it came from ‘Morning Joe.’”
In an interview for the book, Donilon — whom the Times calls “a longtime adviser who is something like Biden’s id” — argued that pushing Biden out of the race “was an act of insanity by the Democratic leadership.”
Especially when a $4 million bonus hangs in the balance.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
Conspiracy to commit fraud. It’s RICO time, baby!
Fraud for what? They paid him to be a campaign consultant with a bonus if his client won. Sleazy because of how mentally unfit his client was but that wasn’t what he was paid for.
Bummer dude. Maybe next time.
The headline should be $8 million payday and that is absolutely obscene
It’s nothing compared to 10% of another four years of Biden.
No, he was paid $4M for his work, with a $4M bonus if he won. So his incentive to win by any means necessary was only $4M
This story is only about the lavish compensation. It was either honorable or dishonorable to work for this man, period.
The story is about the fact that he had an incentive to cover up the truth that he was discovering. Without the prospect of the bonus he might have seen what the situation was and persuaded senior Dems to pull the plug earlier. With the result that the Dems might actually have won the election, but he wouldn’t get his bonus. So his incentive was to just battle on and try to drag Biden over the finish line; what happened after that was not his problem.
Watching the video you see him take long pauses as he contemplates the consequences of his answer to him personally. He obfuscates or lies and he’s cooked. It was obvious that the person asking the questions already knew the answer.
Sold his soul, pathetic.
hunter still got his payout….win or lose
I don’t see the big news on this story. Everyone in the Biden orbit/camp was gonna be better off if he won reelection. That’s how political campaigns function in practice; ‘your’ guy wins and if your support was worthwhile then you get some benefit. Might be a sinecure job, might be appointed Ambassador somewhere, could be a policy advisory role.
I get that this seems crass and commercialized… it definitely is, but that’s how our modern campaign system and elections function. Seems inconceivable that we’d be able to create a system where the incentives of those supporting a particular candidate wouldn’t be aligned with the political fortunes of the candidate.
Most in the Biden camp would have been better off switching to some other Democrat who could actually win and govern for 4 years.
This guy was better off trying to drag Biden over the finish line, and then he could expire.
Why Donilon didn’t just do like all of the other people pulled in front of the committee and just state, “On the advice of my attorney I must take my Fifth Amendment right and refuse to answer that question. I am not an attorney so I must follow my attorney’s advice.” for all the questions and leave it at that. There was really no need for that whole performance that he gave when answering the questions. He should have just taken the Fifth and that would have been it. Nothing the committee could do about that.
IMHO….. if he had managed to drag Biden’s corpse across the finish line he would have dang sure earned the payday.
I’d have asked for $10 million up front in guaranteed $ with an incentive bonus of 3x that to drag Biden across the finish line as the winner. Dude didn’t ask for enough.
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