Jill Biden’s “work husband” Anthony Bernal became the second former White House aide to take the Fifth Amendment when hauled before a congressional committee Wednesday to answer questions about the 46th president’s cognitive decline.
Bernal, like Joe Biden’s former personal physician Kevin O’Connor, invoked his right against self-incrimination and departed without taking reporter questions.
Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said he only got to ask two questions of the Biden family confidant: “Was Joe Biden fit to exercise the duties of the president?” and “Did any unelected official or family member execute the duties of the presidency?”
O’Connor, who served as Biden’s doctor during his vice presidency and presidency, took the Fifth last Friday when asked if he was ever told to “lie about the president’s health” or believed the president was “unfit to execute his duties.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), a member of the Oversight panel, has maintained that Biden “completely understood what was going on” and “may get fumbled up by words, but that’s not anything new and it’s not anything that came with age.”
Neera Tanden, a senior adviser who became director of the Domestic Policy Counsel, and Ashley Williams, deputy director of Oval Office operations, sat for transcribed interviews without taking the Fifth before the brief depositions with Brenal and O’Connor.
Asked whether there was an effort in the White House to cover up Biden’s cognitive decline, Tanden told reporters after her June 24 interview: “Absolutely not.”
Biden “admitted he didn’t know everything, he didn’t sign off on every individual pardon,” Comer added, referencing the ex-commander in chief’s recent interview with The New York Times.