Biden aide denounces GOP probe into former president’s health as baseless and denies any cover-up

WASHINGTON (AP) — A longtime close aide to President Joe Biden on Wednesday denounced Republican investigations into the former president as “baseless” in testimony to lawmakers and defended Biden as capable of carrying out his presidential duties “at all times.”

Steve Ricchetti, a senior advisor to Biden during his presidency, wrote in his opening statement to the House Oversight Committee that he was willing to answer lawmakers’ questions about Biden’s mental state while in office despite Republicans’ effort to “intimidate officials who served in the previous administration.”

“I believe it is important to forcefully rebut this false narrative about the Biden presidency and our role in it,” Ricchetti said.

“There was no nefarious conspiracy of any kind among the president’s senior staff, and there was certainly no conspiracy to hide the president’s mental condition from the American people,” wrote Ricchetti, who has served as an aide to Biden since 2012. He said Biden was “fully capable” of carrying out his duties throughout his term.

Ricchetti’s testimony comes after weeks of appearances from former Biden aides as House Republicans seek to build their investigation, which is central to their oversight agenda as they seek to turn the spotlight back to the last administration.

Some former staffers, including Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, and Anthony Bernal, a top aide to former first lady Jill Biden, invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and declined to answer questions from the committee. Others, including former White House chief of staff Ron Klain and Neera Tanden, former director of the Domestic Policy Council, have answered the committee’s questions at length.

The committee will hear from seven more senior Biden staffers in the coming weeks.

The Trump White House has launched its own inquiry into Biden. In June, Trump issued an executive order that argued there were “clear indications” that Biden “lacked the capacity to exercise his presidential authority” and ordered an investigation into “whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the president.”

Ricchetti argued the Republican-led inquiries were “an obvious attempt to deflect from the chaos of this administration’s first six months.” He contrasted it with what he said were Biden’s accomplishments on issues like infrastructure, inflation, climate policy and the coronavirus response.

“I firmly believe that at all times during my four years in the White House, President Biden was fulfilling his constitutional duties. Did he stumble? Occasionally. Make mistakes? Get up on the wrong side of the bed? He did — we all did. But I always believed — every day — that he had the capability, character, and judgment to be President of the United States,” Ricchetti said.

At the heart of the Republican probe is a legal dispute over the Biden White House’s use of the autopen, a device used in all presidential administrations to issue the president’s signature for laws and executive orders. Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration allege, without evidence, that Biden was not in a cogent state of mind for much of his presidency and that many policies enacted during his time in office may consequently be illegal.

Biden has called Trump and House Republicans “liars” for the claim and said he “made every single one” of the decisions in office that involved an autopen. Biden’s aides are now echoing that sentiment directly to the committee.

Republicans are still eager to highlight Biden’s various gaffes as a political cudgel against Democrats.

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have largely dismissed House Republicans’ probe as a distraction from the Trump administration’s agenda. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat who sits on the House Oversight Committee, said Republicans in the probe “look like losers” after she exited the deposition for Anthony Bernal, the former chief of staff to Jill Biden.