WASHINGTON — Ex-White House Dr. Kevin O’Connor pleaded the Fifth Amendment and ducked out of his high-profile congressional deposition Wednesday over the purported shielding of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.
Biden’s longtime personal physician exited the House Oversight Committee grilling just an hour after it started, with O’Connor’s attorney David Schertler telling reporters, “No comments to press.”
“Dr. O’Connor pleaded the Fifth Amendment,” Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) later revealed. “I’m gonna read the first two questions that were asked.”
“‘Were you ever told to lie about the president’s health?’ He pleaded the Fifth Amendment,” the chairman said. “‘Did you ever believe President Biden was unfit to execute his duties?’”
“I think that this adds more fuel to the fire that there was a cover-up,” he declared.
The Trump White House had declined Tuesday to invoke executive privilege over any of the former White House doctor’s testimony.
“There’s more and more evidence that comes out every day that would suggest that the president was in a pretty severe mental decline, so we’re going to ask about that,” Comer had said before the deposition.
“We can’t have the physician’s office not being truthful about the health condition of the president,” he added, noting that this was part of a larger investigation into who in the Biden White House was authorized to use an autopen that signed executive actions and pardons.
Schertler, a top criminal defense lawyer, also represented former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci during his testimonies before the Oversight’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last year.
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