House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) issued a subpoena to Biden White House advisor Anthony Bernal Thursday, compelling him to appear before the panel after he “bailed” on a voluntary transcribed interview.
“We won’t tolerate this obstruction & effort to hide the truth,” Comer declared on X.
Bernal, former Assistant to both Joe and Jill Biden, was supposed to appear for a deposition on July 16, 2025 as part of the Committee’s investigation into the cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental decline and potentially unauthorized executive actions, including the unauthorized use of an autopen for sweeping pardons.
“The Committee seeks information about your assessment of and relationship with former President Biden to explore whether the time has come for Congress to revisit potential legislation to address the oversight of presidents’ fitness to serve pursuant to its authority under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment or to propose changes to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment itself,” Comer said in the subpoena.
The Trump White House on Tuesday rejected the former Biden White House staffers’ assertions of executive privilege, clearing the way for House investigators to grill them on their alleged “cover-up” of Biden’s mental decline.
Bernal’s legal team had previously told the committee that he would appear for the interview on Thursday, but after the White House Counsel’s Office notified him that it was waiving executive privilege with respect to the Oversight Committee’s investigation, Bernal’s legal team informed the Committee that he would no longer appear for the interview.
In response to this development, Comer said in a statement Wednesday that “it’s abundantly clear that Anthony Bernal never intended to be transparent about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and the ensuing cover-up.”
He added” “With no privilege left to hide behind, Mr. Bernal is now running scared, desperate to bury the truth.”
The chairman noted that “just yesterday, we heard from our first witness, Neera Tanden, the former staff secretary who controlled the Biden autopen. Ms. Tanden testified that she had minimal interaction with President Biden despite wielding tremendous authority.”
Comer added that Tanden “explained that to obtain approval for autopen signatures, she would send decision memos to members of the president’s inner circle and had no visibility of what occurred between sending the memo and receiving it back with approval. Her testimony raises serious questions about who was really calling the shots in the Biden White House amid the president’s obvious decline.”
During the Biden years, Bernal, who is gay, was known in Democrat circles as a “scary” and “shadowy” figure who wielded “an enormous amount of power” in the White House. He also reportedly has a reputation as a bully and sexual harasser that goes back more than a decade.
In a March 2024 report, the New York Post detailed his alleged sordid behavior after speaking with over a dozen of Bernal’s current and former colleagues who asked for anonymity due to fears of retaliation. Five of the sources described instances of bullying that were so demeaning colleagues were reduced to tears.
A former colleague alleged that Bernal made “a lot of inappropriate remarks” that he had come to see as “actually sexual harassment,” such as “talking about other people’s attractiveness and speculating about their sex lives at very weird moments.”
Bernal was also accused of routinely speculating on the sexual preferences of White House colleagues. This alleged behavior apparently made a lot of people uncomfortable.
The sources told the Post that Bernal was “untouchable” at the time because of his close relationship with Jill Biden, who considered him to be her “work husband.”
The Oversight Chairman appears determined prove them wrong.
“Let this subpoena send a clear message to Biden’s inner circle: We will stop at nothing to expose the truth about Joe Biden’s decline & unauthorized use of the autopen,” Comer posted on X Thursday.