A new claim from a Secret Service whistleblower is stirring up more controversy around President Joe Biden’s mental sharpness. According to Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, a Secret Service agent assigned to Biden’s detail told him that the president would sometimes “get lost in his closet” during mornings at the White House.
“He told me that Biden used to get lost in his closet in the mornings at the White House,” Hawley said during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
Hawley, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee and is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, said the story was just one example of the troubling reports he has heard from agents while looking into the assassination attempts on Trump last year.
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“I mean, the guy literally stumbling around in the White House residence couldn’t find his way out of his own closet,” Hawley continued. “The president of the United States.”
The senator used the anecdote to argue that Biden’s alleged cognitive decline is not only real, but has been hidden from the public in a way that he believes amounts to a major scandal.
“This is outrageous. We were lied to,” Hawley said.
So far, the White House has not responded to the story. A spokesperson for President Biden did not reply to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Concerns about Biden’s age and mental fitness have been simmering for years, but they’ve surged recently after the release of Original Sin, a book by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios political reporter Alex Thompson. The book details what the authors describe as a concerted effort by close aides and family members to cover up the president’s decline.
Among the claims in the book are that Biden’s team considered getting him a wheelchair if he won re-election, and that at one point, he failed to recognize actor George Clooney at a fundraising event, even though the two have known each other for years.
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The book also paints a picture of a president increasingly isolated and shielded by his inner circle, raising questions about transparency and decision-making at the highest level of government.
Congressional Republicans have since jumped in, launching their own investigations into Biden’s fitness for office. Representative James Comer of Kentucky has even raised concerns over Biden’s use of an autopen to sign official documents, suggesting they could be legally invalid. Legal scholars, however, have dismissed that argument.
In the middle of all this, Biden, 82, revealed he had aggressive prostate cancer. Responding to the book’s claims in typical Biden fashion, he brushed them off with sarcasm and bravado.
“You can see that I’m mentally incompetent, and I can’t walk, and I can beat the hell out of both of them,” Biden told a CNN reporter, referencing authors Tapper and Thompson.
The growing storm over Biden’s health eventually forced him to drop out of the 2024 race, following a disastrous debate performance against Trump in June. That left Kamala Harris with just three months to rally the Democratic campaign.
“I don’t have any regrets,” Biden told CNN afterward. “I think we’re at one of those inflection points in history, where the decisions we make in the next little bit are going to determine what things look like for the next 20 years.”