House Oversight Committee requests interview, documents from Biden’s physician
Written by ABC Audio ALL RIGHTS RESERVED on July 8, 2024
(WASHINGTON) — The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee issued a letter on Sunday to President Joe Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, requesting a transcribed interview and documents, citing reports that he has not recommended the president take a cognitive test.
In the letter to O’Connor, obtained by ABC News, Chairman James Comer wrote: “Americans question President Biden’s ability to lead the country, and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating circumstances surrounding your assessment in February of this year that ‘President Biden is a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.'”
He “continues to be fit for duty and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations,” O’Connor had said in his February assessment, and that the test “identified no new concerns.”
Biden, in an interview Friday with ABC’s Good Morning America and This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos, would not commit to taking independent cognitive and neurological tests.
When asked whether he has had specific cognitive tests or an examination by a neurologist, Biden said, “No. No one said I had to. No one said. They said I’m good.”
The committee said in its letter Sunday that it’s giving O’Connor until July 14 to reply.
The White House on Sunday responded to Comer’s letter, with Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s office, telling ABC News in a statement, in part, that it was one House Republicans’ “crazy, discredited conspiracy theories.”
The Biden White House also pointed to an Investigator General report about how drugs were prescribed by the White House physician’s office when Donald Trump was in office.
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