Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday told congressional investigators that she did not see a change in former President Biden’s competency in office but his speech did change, according to a source familiar with her testimony.
Ms. Jean-Pierre doesn’t know why his manner of speaking changed and never asked him, she said.
She also said she’s never heard him stutter, an impediment Mr. Biden, 82, badly suffered from as a child and which he struggled with throughout his life.
Ms. Jean-Pierre was the latest member of the Biden administration to sit for a transcribed interview with House Oversight Committee investigators probing the former president’s mental decline and whether White House staff covered it up.
She testified for roughly five hours on Capitol Hill and left without speaking to the press.
Having served as press secretary for nearly three years from 2022 to Mr. Biden’s last day in office, Ms. Jean-Pierre is arguably the most public-facing administration official brought in to be questioned.
During her time at the podium in the White House briefing room, she often deflected questions about Mr. Biden’s mental decline.
On Friday, she told the committee that she never spoke to anyone in the White House who was personally concerned about Mr. Biden’s health. She said all the health or mental acuity-related talking points in her briefing binder were handled exclusively at the senior level, the source said. And, she said the use of the term “cheap fakes” to describe any allegedly manipulated videos of Mr. Biden during his time in office appeared as talking points in her binder, but she didn’t know who added them.
The former press secretary also said she was told that Mr. Biden had a cold during his disastrous presidential debate with then-candidate Donald Trump in June 2024.
Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said ahead of the interview that Ms. Jean-Pierre was intentionally one of the last people brought in to be questioned over Mr. Biden’s mental decline and the use of the autopen to sign important documents.
He said the committee expects there to be information in her upcoming book, “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines,” that will be of interest to the investigation. The book is scheduled to be published in October.
He said the end goal will be to get the “truth to the American people.”
“We can’t prosecute, we can refer,” said Mr. Comer, Kentucky Republican. “The question that I have is, ’Are these pardons and executive orders legal?’ I don’t think anyone’s going to argue that the process that was used for these autopens is the ideal process.”
Mr. Comer said that a report summarizing the findings of the investigation will be “imminent” and will answer questions about what they found regarding the autopen.
“This is a serious investigation about the legality of the use of the autopen, the excessive use of the autopen, and whether or not Joe Biden had any idea who was using the autopen and what the autopen was used to sign with respect to legal documents,” he said.
In announcing her book, Ms. Jean-Pierre said she was leaving the Democratic Party and would now be an independent.
She was requested to sit for an interview in June in a letter from Mr. Comer.
“Your assertion, on multiple occasions, that President Biden’s decline was attributable to such tactics as ’cheap fakes’ or ’misinformation’ cannot go without investigation. If White House staff carried out a strategy lasting months or even years to hide the chief executive’s condition — or to perform his duties — Congress may need to consider a legislative response,” he wrote.
Others requested to testify in the committee’s probe include Ian Sams, special assistant to the president and senior adviser in the White House Counsel’s Office, Andrew Bates, special assistant to the president and senior adviser in the White House Counsel’s Office and Jeff Zients, former White House chief of staff.
Mr. Zients, who will be the last to testify, is scheduled to face the committee next week.
More than a dozen former Biden White House officials have appeared before the committee. Some didn’t appear voluntarily but under subpoena, which allowed them to not answer questions by pleading the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
The National Archives and Records Administration recently handed over to the committee Biden administration memos showing that Mr. Biden was checked out of decisions on pardoning felons and commuting the sentences of death row inmates while his aides worked to make him look involved, though the pardons and commutations were mechanically signed with an autopen.
The documents showed that Mr. Biden didn’t review “thousands of pardons granted in his final days and even his own White House lawyers were scrambling for proof he approved them,” according to committee aides.
In an interview with The New York Times in July, Mr. Biden said he orally granted all the pardons and commutations issued at the end of his term, but that he had his staff use an autopen for the warrants because he granted clemency to so many people.
Mr. Biden pardoned over 4,200 individuals during his four years in office, more than any other president.
Mr. Comer said Friday that there are “inconsistencies” with what was shared with the committee and what was in emails between Biden administration officials discussing the use of the autopen.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.