But despite his public facing role, former senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates did not meet with Biden frequently.
A former top spokesman for the Biden administration believes the media played an outsized role in the American public’s concern about former President Joe Biden’s advanced age and mental capabilities.
Former senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates attributed voters’s concerns about Biden’s age and abilities to the mainstream media and right-wing actors during an interview with the House Oversight Committee, a person familiar with the interview told NR.
Bates considered Biden’s age a polling problem and believed Biden could have won reelection had he not dropped out of the race. Bates said he engaged with over 20 people to discuss Biden’s functioning in order to field questions from the press about his health.
Despite his public facing role, Bates did not meet with Biden frequently. He saw the president in person about once a month and said Biden met with the press team a couple times a year.
Biden’s age was a consistent problem for him in opinion polls long before his disastrous June 2024 debate performance brought the mainstream media’s full attention to it. Bates stated that concerns about Biden’s debate performance were overblown, including concerns stemming from Biden’s infamous “we finally beat Medicare” line in response to a question about the national debt.
He ultimately agreed with Biden’s choice to drop out of the race based on polling data from the week Biden stepped aside.
Before the debate, special counsel Robert Hur observed Biden’s mental deficiencies in a report on his investigation into whether Biden mishandled classified documents. Although Hur chose not to pursue charges against the sitting president, Hur’s description of Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” drew enormous controversy in February 2024.
Bates defended his belief that Hur’s report was “gratuitous” and said he has not listened to audio tapes of Hur’s interview with Biden that were released earlier this year.
Bates’s portfolio also included work with Joe Biden’s scandal-ridden son Hunter, who Bates spoke to about ten times. Bates never asked the Bidens if the information on Hunter’s infamous laptop was true, and he supported Joe Biden’s controversial pardon of his son last December.
A Biden loyalist, Bates was one of the most prominent spokespeople in the Biden White House. He publicly defended the president on numerous occasions when Biden’s political career teetered on the brink of collapse last summer. Biden ended up dropping out and endorsing former Vice President Kamala Harris to run atop the Democratic ticket. Harris lost convincingly to President Donald Trump this past November as Republicans won a 53-47 Senate majority to take control of both legislative chambers.
Bates testified behind closed doors for the Oversight Committee’s investigation into Biden’s cognitive decline and whether the Biden administration authorized presidential autopen usage without Biden’s knowledge. The investigation is specifically focused on Biden’s pardons during the final weeks of his term.
He is not the only Biden loyalist to defend the former president. Two longtime Biden aides, Mike Donilon and Steve Richetti, both asserted that Biden was mentally capable of being president, as NR previously reported. Other Biden aides including Dr. Kevin O’Connor, his personal physician, have invoked their Fifth Amendment right rather than giving testimony to the Oversight Committee.
Bates is one of several Biden communications staffers involved in the investigation. Former special assistant to the president Ian Sams, the Biden White House’s point man on the House GOP impeachment inquiry, told lawmakers he only interacted with Biden twice in person despite his prominent role.
Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is also supposed to testify for the investigation. Jean-Pierre is now a registered independent and has a memoir coming out next month about her time in the Biden White House.
The Oversight Committee’s investigation is the most high-profile congressional investigation into the way Biden’s top aides handled his mental decline. The Trump Justice Department is also investigating the matter.
Biden himself has dismissed the idea that senior aides made decisions about the presidential autopen without his knowledge. But new emails and memos suggest Biden may have passed some of the decisions off to Harris and may not have fully authorized all of the pardons.