former president biden

WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled their long-promised report on former President Biden’s use of the autopen, delivering a blistering critique of his time in office and inner circle that largely rehashes public information while making sweeping accusations about the workings of his White House.

The GOP report does not include any concrete evidence that aides conspired to enact policies without Biden’s knowledge or that the president was unaware of laws, pardons or executive orders signed in his name. But Republicans said their findings cast doubt on all of Biden’s actions in office. They sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging a full investigation. President Trump ordered a similar inquiry earlier this year.

At its core, the report advances contested claims that Biden’s mental state declined to a degree that allowed White House officials to enact policies without his knowledge. It focuses heavily on the pardons he granted in office, including to his son, Hunter Biden, based on depositions with close Biden aides.

“The cost of the scheme to hide the fallout of President Biden’s diminished physical and mental acuity was great but will likely never be fully calculated,” the report reads. “The cover-up put American national security at risk and the nation’s trust in its leaders in jeopardy.”

Biden has strenuously denied he was unaware of his administration’s actions, calling such claims “ridiculous and false.” Democrats on the House Oversight committee denounced the probe as a distraction and waste of time.

Republicans are shifting attention back to Biden at a tumultuous time, 10 months into Trump’s presidency, with the government shut down and Congress at a standstill over legislation to fund it. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has kept the House out of session for nearly a month, with most public-facing committee work grinding to a halt.

The report on Biden was largely compiled over several months before the shutdown began. Based on interviews with more than a dozen members of Biden’s inner circle, the report offers few new revelations, instead drawing broad conclusions from unanswered questions.

It includes repeated references to polls of Biden’s approval rating and perceptions of his public gaffes and apparent aging, much of it publicly known.

It alleges a “cover-up of the president’s cognitive decline” orchestrated by Biden’s inner circle and takes particular aim at Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, who invoked his Fifth Amendment right against testifying. Republicans also singled out senior aides Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini, who similarly pleaded the Fifth. All three “should face further scrutiny” from the Justice Department, Republicans said.

Republicans also sent a letter to the D.C. Board of Medicine urging that O’Connor face “discipline, sanction or revocation of his medical license” and “be barred from the practice of medicine in the District of Columbia.”

The report does not include full transcripts of the at-times multiple hours of recorded testimony that witnesses delivered before the committee. It repeatedly scolds Biden officials and Democratic allies for defending Biden’s mental state.

“The inner-most circle, or cocoon, of the White House senior staff organized one of the largest scandals in American history — hiding a cognitively failing president and refusing any means of confirmation of such demise,” the report says.

While the report claims that record-keeping policies in the Biden White House “were so lax that the chain of custody for a given decision is difficult or impossible to establish,” Republicans do not offer any concrete instances of the chain of command being violated or a policy being enacted without Biden’s knowledge.

Still, Republicans argue that Biden’s use of the autopen should be considered invalid unless there is documented proof of him approving a decision.

“Barring evidence of executive actions taken during the Biden presidency showing that President Biden indeed took a particular executive action, the committee deems those actions taken through use of the autopen as void,” the report says.

Democrats and legal experts have warned that broad scrutiny of executive actions could pose future legal headaches for the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, who also often enact policies directed by lawmakers through devices like the presidential autopen.

Brown and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Former President Biden is receiving radiation and hormone therapy as part of a new phase of treating the aggressive form of prostate cancer he was diagnosed with after leaving office, a spokesperson said Saturday.

“As part of a treatment plan for prostate cancer, President Biden is currently undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment,” Biden aide Kelly Scully said.

Biden, 82, left office in January after he had dropped his bid for reelection six months earlier following a disastrous debate against Republican Donald Trump amid concerns about Biden’s age, health and mental fitness. Trump, despite similar questions during the campaign about his age and mental fitness, defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, who was Biden’s vice president.

In May, Biden’s postpresidential office announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and that it had spread to his bone. The discovery came after he reported urinary symptoms.

Prostate cancers are graded for aggressiveness using what is known as a Gleason score. The scores range from 6 to 10, with 8, 9 and 10 prostate cancers behaving more aggressively. Biden’s office said his score was 9, suggesting his cancer is among the most aggressive.

Last month, Biden had surgery to remove skin cancer lesions from his forehead.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Kamala Harris says she would have picked Pete Buttigieg as her running mate last year but America wasn’t ready for the pairing, according to an excerpt of her new book.

Harris writes in an excerpt of “107 Days” published Wednesday in The Atlantic that former President Biden’s transportation secretary was her “first choice,” adding that he “would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight white man.”

“But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk,” she writes.

Her thoughts on selecting a running mate come as potential 2028 contenders begin traveling the U.S. in the early days of the second Trump administration.

In the book excerpt, she writes about her love of working with Buttigieg and her friendship with him and his husband, but that the two of them on the Democratic ticket would have been too risky.

“And I think Pete also knew that — to our mutual sadness,” she writes.

It wasn’t immediately clear at what point she decided against Buttigieg, a former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and former intelligence officer in the Navy Reserves. Buttigieg emerged as a national political figure during his 2020 presidential run in which he finished atop the Iowa caucuses.

The Associated Press didn’t immediately hear back from a spokesperson for Buttigieg.

After Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July 2024 following a disastrous debate performance, Harris was left to head up the Democratic ticket.

She picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate after his attack line against former President Donald Trump and his running mate, then-Ohio Sen. JD Vance — “These guys are just weird” — spread widely. They ultimately lost.

Harris’ book, whose title is referencing the length of her condensed presidential campaign, is set to be published by Simon & Schuster on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered his administration on Wednesday to investigate then-President Biden’s use of an autopen to sign pardons and other documents, increasing the pressure on his predecessor as House Republicans also requested interviews with members of Biden’s inner circle.

An autopen is a mechanical device that is used to replicate a person’s authentic signature, and presidents have used them for decades. However, Trump has frequently suggested that some of Biden’s actions are invalid because his aides were usurping presidential authority to cover up what Trump claims is Biden’s cognitive decline.

“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump wrote in a memo. “The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”

Trump directed Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and White House Counsel David Warrington to handle the investigation.

Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, a Republican, requested transcribed interviews with five Biden aides, alleging they had participated in a “cover-up” that amounted to “one of the greatest scandals in our nation’s history.”

“These five former senior advisors were eyewitnesses to President Biden’s condition and operations within the Biden White House,” Comer said in a statement. “They must appear before the House Oversight Committee and provide truthful answers about President Biden’s cognitive state and who was calling the shots.”

Interviews were requested with White House senior advisors Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, former Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed and Steve Ricchetti, a former counselor to the president.

Comer reiterated his call for Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, and former senior White House aides Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams and Neera Tanden to appear before the committee. He warned subpoenas would be issued this week if they refuse to schedule voluntary interviews.

“I think that people will start coming in the next two weeks,” Comer told reporters. He added that the committee would release a report with its findings, “and we’ll release the transcribed interviews, so it’ll be very transparent.”

Democrats have dismissed the effort as a distraction.

“Chairman Comer had his big shot in the last Congress to impeach Joe Biden and it was, of course, a spectacular flop,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who served as the ranking member on the Oversight Committee in the previous Congress. “And now he’s just living off of a spent dream. It’s over. And he should give up the whole thing.”

Republicans on the committee are eager to pursue the investigation.

“The American people didn’t elect a bureaucracy to run the country,” said Rep. Brandon Gill, a freshman Republican from Texas. “I think that the American people deserve to know the truth and they want to know the truth of what happened.”

The Republican inquiry so far has focused on the final executive actions of Biden’s administration, which included the issuing of new federal rules and presidential pardons that they claim may be invalid.

Comer cited the book “Original Sin” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, which details concerns and debates inside the White House and Democratic Party over Biden’s mental state and age.

In the book, Tapper and Thompson wrote, “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”

Biden and members of his family have vigorously denied the book’s claims.

“This book is political fairy smut for the permanent, professional chattering class,” said Naomi Biden, the former president’s granddaughter.

Biden withdrew from the presidential race last summer after a debate against Trump in which he appeared to lose his train of thought multiple times, muttered inaudible answers and misnamed different government programs.

The disastrous debate performance pushed questions about his age and mental acuity to the forefront, ultimately leading Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. He was replaced on the ticket by Kamala Harris, who lost the election to Trump.

Brown and Megerian write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The revelation that former President Biden has advanced prostate cancer generated more questions than answers on Monday, prompting debate among experts in the oncology community over the likely progression of his disease and resurfacing concerns in Washington over his decision last year to run for reelection.

Biden’s private office said Sunday afternoon that he had been diagnosed earlier in the week with an “aggressive form” of the cancer that had already spread to his bones, after urinary symptoms led to the discovery of a nodule on his prostate.

But it was not made clear whether Biden, 82, had been testing his prostate-specific antigens, known as PSA levels, during his presidency — and if so whether those results had indicated an elevated risk of cancer while he was still in office or during his campaign for reelection.

Biden’s diagnosis comes at a difficult time for the former president, as scrutiny grows over his decision to run for a second term last year — and whether it cost the Democrats the White House. Biden ultimately dropped out of the race after a devastating debate performance with Donald Trump laid bare widespread concerns over his age and health, leaving his successor on the Democratic ticket — Vice President Kamala Harris — little time to run her own campaign.

A book set to publish this week titled “Original Sin,” by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, details efforts by Biden’s aides to shield the effects of his aging from the public and the press. The cancer diagnosis only intensified scrutiny over Biden’s health and questions as to whether he and his team were honest about it with the public.

“I think those conversations are going to happen,” said David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to President Obama.

President Trump, asked about Biden’s diagnosis during an Oval Office event Monday, said it was “a very, very sad situation” and that he felt “badly about it.”

But he also questioned why the cancer wasn’t caught earlier, and why the public wasn’t notified earlier, tying the situation to questions he has long raised about Biden’s mental fitness to serve as president.

PSA tests are not typically recommended for men over 70 due to the risk of false positive results or of associated treatments causing more harm than good to older patients, who are more likely to die of other causes first.

But annual physicals for sitting presidents — especially of Biden’s age — are more comprehensive than those for private citizens. And a failure to test for elevated PSA levels could have missed the progression of the disease.

A letter from Biden’s White House physician from February of last year made no mention of PSA testing, unlike the most recent letter detailing the results of Trump’s latest physical, which references a normal measurement. Biden’s current aides did not respond to requests for comment on whether his office would further detail his diagnostic testing history.

Even if his doctors had tested for PSA levels at the time, results may not have picked up an aggressive form of the cancer, experts said.

Some specialists in the field said it was possible, if rare, for Biden’s cancer to emerge and spread since his last physical in the White House. Roughly 10% of patients who are newly diagnosed with prostate cancer are found with an advanced form of the disease that has metastasized to other parts of the body.

Dr. Mark Litwin, the chair of UCLA Urology, said it is in the nature of aggressive prostate cancers to grow quickly. “So it is likely that this tumor began more recently,” he said.

Litwin said he does not doubt that Biden would have been screened for elevated PSA levels. But, he said, he could be among those patients whose cancers do not produce elevated PSA levels or whose more aggressive cancers rapidly grow and metastasize within a matter of months.

“The fact that he has metastatic disease at diagnosis, to me, as an expert in the area and as a clinician taking care of guys with prostate cancer all the time, just says that he is unfortunate,” Litwin said.

Litwin and other experts in prostate cancer from USC, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Cedars-Sinai and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute all told The Times that Biden’s diagnosis — at least based on publicly available information — was not incredibly unusual, and similar to diagnoses received by older American men all the time.

They said he and his doctors absolutely would have discussed testing his PSA levels, given his high level of care as president. But they also said it would have been well within medical best practices for him to decide with those doctors to stop getting tested given his age.

Dr. Howard Sandler, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Cedars-Sinai, said he sees three potential explanations for Biden’s diagnosis.

One is that Biden and his doctors made a decision “to not screen any longer, which would be well within the standard of care” given Biden’s age, he said.

A second is that Biden’s was tested, and his PSA level “was elevated, maybe not dramatically but a little bit elevated, but they said, ‘Well, we’re not gonna really investigate it,’” again because of Biden’s age, Sandler said.

The third, which Sandler said was “less likely,” is that Biden’s PSA was checked “and was fine, but he ended up with an aggressive prostate cancer that doesn’t produce much PSA” and so wasn’t captured.

Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist serving as vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and a former health policy official in the Biden administration, told MSNBC that Biden has likely had cancer for “more than several years.”

“He did not develop it in the last 100, 200 days. He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency, in 2021,” Emanuel said.

But Litwin, who said he is a friend of Emanuel’s, said most men in their 70s or 80s have some kind of prostate cancer, even if it is just “smoldering along” — there but not particularly aggressive or quickly spreading — and unlikely to be the cause of their death.

He said Biden may well have had some similar form of cancer in his prostate for a long time, but that he did not believe that the aggressive form that has metastasized would have been around for as long as Emanuel seemed to suggest.

Departing Rome aboard Air Force Two, Vice President JD Vance told reporters he was sending his best wishes to the former president, but expressed concern that his recent diagnosis underscored concerns over Biden’s condition that dogged his presidency.

“Whether the right time to have this conversation is now or in the future, we really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job,” Vance said. “I don’t think that he was in good enough health. In some ways, I blame him less than I blame the people around him.”

Trump’s medical team has also faced questions of transparency.

When Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 during his first term, at the height of the pandemic, he was closer to death than his White House acknowledged at the time. And his doctors and aides regularly use superlatives to describe the health of the 78-year-old president, with Karoline Leavitt, his White House press secretary, referring to him as “perfect” on Monday.

“Cancer touches us all,” Biden posted on social media alongside a photo with his wife, Jill Biden, in his first remarks on his diagnosis.

“Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places,” he added. “Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.”

PHOENIX — Former President Biden’s time in office is behind him, but his age and mental acuity have become an issue for the next leaders in his party.

Audio was published Friday from portions of interviews Biden gave to federal prosecutors in 2023, the latest in a stream of reports putting questions about Biden’s health back in the spotlight. Months after former Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Donald Trump, a new book alleges that White House aides covered up Biden’s physical and mental decline.

Several potential Democratic contenders for the 2028 nomination have been asked in recent days whether they believe Biden was declining in office or whether he should have sought reelection before a disastrous debate performance led to his withdrawal.

Many Democrats would prefer to focus on President Trump’s second term and his sagging poll numbers. Trump has done his best to prevent that — mentioning Biden’s name an average of six times per day during his first 100 days in office, according to an NBC News analysis — and Republicans have followed his lead, betting that voters frustrated by Trump’s policy moves will still prefer him over memories of another unpopular presidency.

In the race for Virginia governor, one of this year’s highest-profile contests, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears is running a pair of digital ads tying Democratic former Rep. Abigail Spanberger to Biden, with images of the two hugging and the former president calling her a friend.

“The stench of Joe Biden still lingers on the Democratic Party,” Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett said. “We have to do the hard work of fixing that, and I think that includes telling the truth, frankly, about when we were wrong.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told Politico this week that “there’s no doubt” that Biden, now 82, experienced cognitive decline as president.

Pete Buttigieg, who was Biden’s Transportation secretary, wasn’t as blunt but stopped short of defending Biden’s initial decision to run for reelection. He responded “maybe” when asked Tuesday whether the Democratic Party would have been better off if Biden hadn’t declared a bid for a second term.

“Right now, with the advantage of hindsight, I think most people would agree that that’s the case,” Buttigieg told reporters during a stop in Iowa.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he didn’t see signs of mental or physical decline in his meetings with Biden.

“I saw him a few times,” he told CNN this week. “I certainly went to the White House whenever there was an opportunity for me to make the case for something for people in my state. And I never had the experience of anything other than a guy who brought to the table a lot of good ideas about how to solve problems.”

The book “Original Sin,” by journalists Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, revives a core controversy of Biden’s presidency: his decision to run for a second term despite voters, including Democrats, telling pollsters that he should not. Biden would have been 86 at the end of a second term had he won in November.

A spokesperson for Biden did not respond to a request for comment.

“We continue to await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or where he was unable to do his job,” the spokesperson has told many media outlets in response to the book.

Late Friday, Axios published portions from audio recordings of Biden’s six hours of interviews with prosecutors investigating his handling of classified documents after his term as vice president ended in 2017, for which he was not charged.

The Biden administration had already released transcripts of the interviews, but the recordings shed light on special counsel Robert Hur’s characterization of Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and appeared to validate his claim that the then-president struggled to recall key dates, including the year his son Beau died of cancer — 2015.

Biden and his aides fiercely objected to Hur’s report, which they characterized as a partisan hit. Biden at that time — early 2024 — was still planning to run for a second term and fending off accusations that he was too old for another four years in the job.

The recordings released by Axios include Biden’s discussion of his son’s death. His responses to some of the prosecutors’ questions are punctuated by long pauses, and his lawyers at times stepped in to help him recall dates and timelines.

Before he dropped his reelection bid last summer, Biden faced widespread doubts within his own party, even as Democratic leaders dismissed a series of verbal flubs and Republican allegations about his declining acuity.

In January 2022, a year into Biden’s first term, an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that only 48% of Democrats wanted him to seek reelection. That fell to 37% of Democrats in an AP-NORC poll in February 2023. Three-quarters of Americans — and 69% of Democrats — said in August 2023 that they believed Biden was too old to serve as president for another four-year term.

And shortly after his debate flop, nearly two-thirds of Democrats said Biden should withdraw from the race.

Biden and former First Lady Jill Biden appeared on ABC’s “The View” on May 8 in a preemptive defense of his health and decision-making before the first excerpts of “Original Sin” were published.

The former president said he’s responsible for Trump’s victory but attributed Harris’ loss, at least in part, to sexism and racism. He maintained that he would have won had he remained the Democratic nominee. Both Bidens rejected concerns about his cognitive decline.

Patricia McEnerney, a 74-year-old Democrat in Goodyear, Ariz., said Biden should not have tried to run again.

“I think it’s sad the way it ended,” she said.

She compared him to Douglas MacArthur, the World War II and Korean War general famously dismissed by President Truman.

“I think he needs to stop giving interviews. I think that would help,” McEnerney said. “Like MacArthur said, generals just fade away.”

Janet Stumps, a 66-year-old Democrat also from Goodyear, a Phoenix suburb, had a different view.

“I don’t think it’s going to hurt the Democrats,” Stumps said. “I feel badly that he feels he has to defend himself. I don’t think he has to. Everybody ages. And the fact that he did what he did at his age, I think he should be commended for it.”

Hackett, the Democratic strategist, predicted Biden won’t be a major factor in the 2026 midterms or the 2028 presidential primaries. But he said Democrats who want voters to trust them would be well-served “by telling the truth about the mistakes that our party made in the run-up to 2024.”

“Those mistakes were largely driven by Joe Biden, and I think any Democrat not willing to say that is not really prepared to face the voters, who want the truth and they want authenticity,” Hackett said.

Rick Wilson, a former GOP strategist who co-founded the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project, said Republicans want to talk about Biden to avoid defending Trump. But he said the strategy is folly.

Besides “political nerds,” he said, “no one else cares.”

Cooper writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Thomas Beaumont in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — A small nodule was found in the prostate of former President Biden during a routine physical exam, a spokesperson said Tuesday.

A short statement said the finding “necessitated further evaluation,” but it was not clear whether that had already taken place or the outcome of the examination.

The detection of nodules in the prostate generally requires a further exam by a urologist to rule out prostate cancer. These kinds of abnormal growths can be caused by cancer or by less serious conditions, including inflammation or an enlarged prostate.

Biden is 82. His age and concerns about his health were cited by Democratic leaders who pressed him to abandon his reelection bid in 2024 following a disastrous debate performance last June.

But as recently as last week, Biden rejected concerns about his age, saying the broader party didn’t buy into that, and instead blaming the Democratic leadership and “significant contributors.”

President Trump repeatedly raised questions about Biden’s physical and mental capacity during the campaign.

In February 2023, Biden had a skin lesion removed from his chest that was a basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer. And in November 2021, he had a polyp removed from his colon that was a benign, but potentially pre-cancerous lesion.