White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attacked former first lady Jill Biden on Thursday over allegations that individuals around then-President Biden intentionally kept information about his health issues a secret.
Republicans are calling on two dozen former senior Biden administration officials to appear before the Senate and answer questions about the former president’s health amid allegations that the White House deliberately did not disclose his cognitive and physical decline.
Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked Leavitt in the White House briefing on Thursday if President Trump is satisfied with aides to the former president sitting for the interviews or if he would like to see testimony from the former first lady as well.
“Frankly, the former first lady should certainly speak up about what we saw in regard to her husband and when she saw it and what she knew. Because I think anybody looking, again, at the videos and photo evidence of Joe Biden with your own eyes and a bit of little common sense can see this is a clear cover-up and Jill Biden was definitely complacent in that cover-up,” Leavitt said.
She noted that the Bidens were on ABC’s “The View” recently, during which they denied accusations that the former president’s mental acuity took a slide toward the end of his term.
“She’s still lying to the American people,” Leavitt maintained Thursday. “And frankly, it’s insulting and she needs to answer for it.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent letters last week requesting testimony from former Vice President Kamala Harris, Cabinet officials like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Biden’s former chief of staff Jeff Zients.
Johnson said he would consider issuing subpoenas if his invitations are ignored.
Questions over the true extent of Biden’s health problems have been fueled by reporting in a new book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, which exposed concerns from senior White House aides such as whether Biden would need a wheelchair if he was reelected.
Biden’s office also recently announced that the former president has been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer.
Doctors had diagnosed Biden with a prostate nodule after he experienced increasing urinary symptoms and he was later diagnosed with cancer that had metastasized to his bones.
