Ex-Biden Adviser: Dems, Pundits Overreacted to Cognitive Decline in Pushing Him Out of Race

A key campaign and White House adviser to former President Joe Biden complained to House investigators Thursday that Democrats in Congress and political pundits overreacted in pushing his former boss out of last year’s presidential race.  

Mike Donilon, who was senior adviser in the Biden White House, sat down for a transcribed interview with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Donilon’s testimony began 10 a.m., and he walked out the door just after 4 p.m., flanked by lawyers.

As he left, he ignored questions from The Daily Signal about whether Biden authorized the use of the autopen, which White House staffers used for presidential actions. He also ignored another reporter’s question about what he told the committee interrogators.

During his interview, Donilon conceded Biden’s presence wasn’t as commanding as in the past and that the former president could stumble over more words than in earlier years, according to a source familiar with the interview. 

Donilon said he didn’t recall having any knowledge of the autopen, and he did not know what the autopen was used for. He also said he was frustrated and knew it was difficult to get past the visuals of Biden that people were seeing, according to the source.

Donilon was identified as a member of Biden’s “politburo” in the book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by reporters Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper. The politburo was a group that reportedly sought to hide Biden’s cognitive decline

House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., has led the investigation into who was running the White House during Biden’s apparent mental decline. The committee is also investigating whether White House staffers used the autopen to take presidential actions that Biden did not authorize or was unaware of. 

Donilon is the eighth former Biden administration aide to appear before the House panel. 

He was a senior adviser for the first three years of the Biden White House. Before that, he was a chief strategist for the Biden 2024 reelection campaign—which was ended after his disastrous presidential debate performance in June of last year. He was also a chief strategist for Biden’s victorious 2020 campaign. 

Donilon, currently a resident fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, first met Biden in 1981, when the latter was a Democrat senator from Delaware, Fox News reported. He was also on the winning side of Democrat Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential election victory and Democrat Doug Wilder’s Virginia gubernatorial win in 1989. 

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