WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee will bring in four more ex-White House aides for questioning about the alleged cover-up of former President Joe Biden’s mental decline — including the 46th president’s last chief of staff, Jeff Zients, who was recently revealed to have approved last-minute pardons.
Zients, former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, former deputy press secretary Andrew Bates and former White House Counsel’s Office senior adviser Ian Sams have all been asked to sit for transcribed interviews, according to a committee aide.
Last-day clemencies, which included preemptive pardons for Biden family members, had been authorized by Zients in a Jan. 19, 2025, email, hours before the 46th president would leave the White House.
“I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons,” Zients wrote in the missive at 10:31 p.m. that day, according to The New York Times.
Biden maintained in an interview with the outlet that he “made every decision” on 25 warrants for pardons and commutations between last December and January.
So far, the Oversight panel has interviewed five Biden aides — two of whom took the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer any questions about the purported shielding of the president’s diminished mental faculties.
Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has declared the probe is uncovering “a historic scandal” and railed against the decision by Biden’s former personal physician Kevin O’Connor and first lady Jill Biden’s top aide Anthony Bernal to invoke their right against self-incrimination.
