Reports of former President Joe Biden’s existence — or lack thereof — while in the White House just took a shocking turn after a top Biden aide confessed he never had a face-to-face relationship with his former boss.
Former White House spokesman Ian Sams spoke face-to-face with Biden on just two occasions during his more than two years in the administration, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) revealed to pool reporters yesterday.
“This was a huge interview today, and I think it contradicts everything that the former Biden people are saying with respect to the president’s mental fitness,” argued Comer, describing Sams’ appearance as “one of the most shocking” sit-downs yet.
The two interactions, which Comer described in a statement as “very limited,” were in addition to a virtual meeting Sams joined involving the 46th president and a phone call with Biden.
The news comes as congressional leaders continue to probe the Biden “autopen” scandal where claims that Biden was mentally unfit to serve as president continue to surface.
The claims from Sams also come after former special counsel Robert Hur admitted that Biden willingly kept information from his top staff.
“In fact, [former special counsel] Robert Hur spent more time with Joe Biden than Ian Sams,” added Comer, in reference to the prosecutor’s two-day interview with the president while investigating whether Biden “willfully” kept national security documents.
Hur determined that Biden, now 82, deliberately and illegally retained classified documents from his vice presidency and Senate career — but declined to bring charges, in part because he believed jurors would view the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
One Biden White House colleague who worked with Sams throughout his employment there found it credible that he had virtually no access to Bide, even noting both that Sams’ office was in the next-door Eisenhower Executive Office Building rather than the West Wing, and that he typically interacted with go-betweens such as communications chief Anita Dunn and White House counsels Staurt Delery and Ed Siskel.
Another former Biden aide said Sams appeared to get his “marching orders” from Dunn and that the two face-to-face meetings Sams testified to were “more than I thought.”
“He [Sams] had zero contact with him [Biden],” this person added.
Sams served as a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office from mid-2022 to August 2024, when he left to serve as a senior adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
“It raises serious concerns and serious questions about who was calling shots at the White House,” Comer alleged after detailing the testimony from Sams.
“If the White House spokesperson was being shielded from the president of the United States, who was operating the Oval Office?”
Thursday’s interview was the 11th with a former Biden aide centered around Biden’s sharp mental decline, which Republican investigators believe may have involved the improper wielding of executive authority.
“There were very few people around Joe Biden, especially at the end,” Comer said, “and that’s when the majority of the pardons and executive orders were signed with that autopen.”
Even journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson noted in their tell-all book “Original Sin” detailing the inner workings of the Biden White House were based on an absentee Biden, saying: “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”
The co-authors said those aides — including senior adviser Mike Donilon, counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti and deputy White House chief of staff Bruce Reed — as well as first lady Jill Biden and first son Hunter Biden formed a sort of “politburo” for undertaking big decisions.