SAUNDERS: The bumbling cover-up of Biden’s decline reads like Hollywood comedy

WASHINGTON — What did former President Joe Biden not know and when did his staff know it?

That is the question that will haunt the former president and his inner circle for years to come as tell-all books and reports from Hill Republicans tell the story of Biden’s mental decline, which a tight-knit group of top Biden aides tried to hide from the public.

The latest revelations come via the House Oversight Committee, which released a 91-page report, “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion and Deception in the Biden White House,” on Tuesday.

But really, the report’s name should be: “The Gang That Couldn’t Spin Straight.”

I’ve read government reports on corrupt behavior that you knew would make for sophisticated drama. The Autopen report shouts comedy gold. Think Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” — which fits because Team Biden got filmmaker Steven Spielberg and producer Jeffrey Katzenberg to coach Biden before his 2024 State of the Union address.

With a script and advice from two Hollywood legends, Biden was a star.

But also, Biden enjoyed a low bar. His winning line during his 2020 debate against now-President Donald Trump: “Will you shut up, man?”

According to the report, White House physician Kevin O’Connor failed to order a cognitive test on the president. It was a choice that screamed: We don’t’ want to know.

Former senior adviser to the president Anita Dunn brought up the question of whether Biden should undergo a cognitive test — “the one test that would provide some assurance to the American people that the president was not in mental decline,” quoth the report — and it still didn’t happen.

They knew. They didn’t want you to know.

“Original Sin,” the tell-all book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, reported that the inner circle discussed having Biden use a wheelchair to prevent POTUS from falling — “but they couldn’t do so until after the election.”

O’Connor invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when the committee questioned him, as did Annie Tomasini, Biden’s deputy chief of staff, and Anthony Bernal, then-first lady Jill Biden’s chief of staff.

The report looked at Biden’s use of presidential pardon power, which was highly controversial given that Biden pardoned his son Hunter, who had a record of tax fraud and gun charges, after telling voters he would not pardon his son. Then there were pardons for family members who had not been charged with crimes.

The committee estimated that 96 percent of Biden pardons were issued during his last four months in office.

No worries, Biden family. “Presidents cannot undo the pardons of their predecessors. If they could, even long-settled pardons could be vulnerable to challenge,” Jeffrey Crouch, American University associate professor of American history, informed me.

Dunn and company were able to contain the story of Biden’s decline — a decline that awaits us all — by wrapping Biden inside a small bubble within the infamous White House bubble.

The team put communications aide Ian Sams in charge of answering media questions on Biden’s health and fitness for office, but Sams told the committee his meetings with Biden were “very infrequent.” They numbered four.

Sams was in charge of responding to the findings of special counsel Robert Hur, who looked into allegations of Biden’s habitual mishandling of classified information. As he talked with Biden, Hur witnessed the president forgetting when his son Beau passed away and when his term as vice president concluded.

Hur also found that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” But Hur did not file charges because of the challenges of prosecuting a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Former White House staff secretary Neera Tanden said she saw the president every six to eight weeks.

Why did top White House aides try to cover up Biden’s decreasing capacity?

To them, I imagine, there was a choice between holding onto power and letting go. Alas, there was no George Washington in this swamp.

In the beginning, they may have told themselves that only Biden, an experienced hand, could beat Trump, which he did in 2020. But then the experienced hand invited chaos at the border, oversaw a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and embraced “gender-affirming care” for minors.

My favorite quote in the report came from senior Biden adviser Ashley Williams, who offered, “I wouldn’t characterize having a good memory as something that is important in the White House.”

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.