WASHINGTON — Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain was “cooperative” Thursday with House Republicans investigating Joe Biden’s cognitive slippage while president — after Klain badmouthed his former boss in a recent book about the 46th commander-in-chief.
Klain — a member of a purported “Politburo” that made high-level decisions as Biden grew less clear-headed during his term — appeared before the House Oversight Committee to respond to accusations that senior aides shielded the 46th president’s physical and mental infirmity.
“Evidence emerges on a daily basis that would suggest Joe Biden wasn’t mentally fit to be president,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) told reporters, citing claims that the former chief executive was put on “mind-altering” sleeping pills before his debate flop against former President Donald Trump.
Comer said his team was asking about preparations for the June 27, 2024, showdown and reviewing clips of Biden’s scattered interview with special counsel Robert Hur, after which the investigator concluded he could not charge the president with willful retention of national security information in part because a jury would likely not convict an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Although several other prominent former aides have invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions from the committee, Klain didn’t exercise his constitutional protection against self-incrimination.
“I found Mr. Klain to be very credible, he answered every single question, he was fully cooperative,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). “There’s times where he was asked about personal conversations with the president and he was forthcoming.”
“In my opinion, he’s not trying to avoid answering the questions,” added Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). “He’s saying the things that I kind of expected him to say.”
Former Biden White House aides weren’t surprised that Klain would be answering questions — noting that he’s had a rocky relationship with his former boss over his willingness to be quoted in tell-all books like Chris Whipple’s tome “Uncharted.”
“Ron Klain taking the opportunity to speak is so classic — always yapping,” said one former official.
“Nobody seems surprised he didn’t go plead-the-Fifth route, given that he’s been prone to speak unprompted.”
Klain has publicly presented himself as slavishly loyal to his former boss — even openly sobbing in February 2023 as he departed the top White House job and blubbering during a goodbye party in the East Room that “I learned everything I know about how to be a good father from Joe Biden.”
But tension has existed for years inside the Biden camp over Klain’s candor — with the lieutenant said to have had to apologize to the future president after siding with those opposed to his running in 2016.
More recently, Klain has attempted to call Biden to apologize for his remarks to book authors, thought it’s unclear whether the ex-president, who has bitterly denied being on the cusp of senility, returned his calls.
In “Uncharted,” Whipple said Klain believed Biden to be “exhausted and out of it” when the former chief of staff arrived at Camp David to prep him for the Trump debate.
“We sat around the table,” Klain recalled to the author. “[Biden] had answers on cards, and he was just extremely exhausted. And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with NATO leaders.”
At one point, Whipple writes, Klain “wondered half-seriously if Biden thought he was president of NATO instead of the US.”
“He’s saying the things that I kind of expected him to say, which is reflective of the book, the Whipple book, and some of the articles written about that,” Biggs said Thursday.
According to another book expose, “Original Sin,” Klain was one of five senior aides who were really “running the country.”
“Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board,” a source familiar with the White House’s inner workings told co-authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.
“I’ve never seen a situation like this before, with so few people having so much power. They would make huge economic decisions without calling [Treasury] Secretary [Janet] Yellen,” spilled an unidentified cabinet secretary about the Politburo’s influence.
The bombshell book also described Klain as “disappointed” in Biden’s debate prep, which featured frequent naps and an ill-timed cold.
“He’d been assured that Biden had been reviewing his prep materials before he arrived at Camp David, but he hadn’t,” Tapper and Thompson wrote.
Yet another book, “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America” by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, quotes Klain privately declaring “we’re f–ked” after Biden’s unsteady June 2024 debate performance.
Previous aides hauled in to testify about Biden’s decline include fellow former senior adviser Annie Tomasini and first lady Jill Biden’s powerful former chief of staff Anthony Bernal, as well as former presidential physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor.
Tomasini had initially agreed to come before the committee willingly but eventually requested a subpoena. During her hearing last week, Tomasini pleaded the Fifth.
Jill Biden’s “work husband” Bernal also took the Fifth in his Oversight hearing earlier this month — after O’Connor did the same.
The Oversight Committee will bring in four more members of Biden’s inner circle for questioning, including Jeff Zients, Klain’s successor as chief of staff, who was recently revealed to have given the final stamp of approval to eleventh-hour pardons signed with an autopen.
