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Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told House investigators that she did not see a change in former President Joe Biden’s competency over several years, but she acknowledged that he was “not the same speaker he was when she met him.”
Jean-Pierre was the latest in a string of former Biden White House officials to be interviewed by House Oversight Committee investigators over an alleged cover-up of the ex-president’s mental acuity.
She did not speak to reporters on her way into the interview just off Capitol Hill, nor did she speak after the nearly five-hour, closed-door transcribed interview.
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But a source familiar with the interview shared with Fox News Digital that Jean-Pierre told investigators that while working for Biden in various capacities from 2009 to 2025, “she did not see a change in President Biden’s competency.”
“She did acknowledge President Biden is not the same speaker he was when she met him,” the source noted. “She does not know why his speaking changed and never asked him.”
Jean-Pierre, who is one of the most high-profile figures from the Biden administration to appear before the committee, was among those who publicly defended Biden after his June 2024 debate against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.
During the debate, Jean-Pierre said she was told by “senior staff that President Biden had a cold,” the source said.
Shortly after the debate, she told reporters at a press briefing in early July that Biden was “as sharp as ever.”
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Jean-Pierre told investigators that talking points were entered into her binder for press briefings by “various advisors,” but specifically ones related to Biden’s health and mental acuity “were handled exclusively at the senior level.”
She cited the “cheap fakes” talking point, which at the time, Jean-Pierre charged were people online manipulating videos of Biden to mislead the public on his health and cognitive ability. She told investigators that point in particular “appeared as a talking point in her binder, but she does not know specifically who added it.”
She also said that she never spoke with anyone in the White House “personally concerned about President Biden’s health.”
Jean-Pierre began her role as White House press secretary in 2022, shortly after former White House press secretary Jen Psaki left the position, and she stayed on until the end of Biden’s presidency in January.
But her relationship with Biden-world became estranged after her departure from the Democratic Party earlier this year, which was announced in a press release for her forthcoming book, “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.”
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Jean-Pierre’s appearance before investigators came as House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said earlier this week that his panel’s ongoing probe into Biden’s use of an autopen was coming to its conclusion.
The focus in particular was whether top officials engaged in a cover-up of Biden’s mental and physical state in the White House, and whether any executive actions or a litany of pardons were approved via autopen without the then-president’s full awareness.
Comer said heading into the hearing that one of the questions at the top of his mind were whether “these pardons and executive orders [are] legal?”
“I don’t think anyone’s going to argue that the process that was used for these autopens is the ideal process,” Comer said. “And what we’ve seen with the emails that have surfaced in the last week — even the Merrick Garland Department of Justice was very concerned about how this administration was using the autopen.”
“When people in the Department of Justice email people who they believe were the ones making the decisions on the autopen,” he continued. “And asked the question via email from the Department of Justice, ‘Does the president even know who they just pardoned?’ I mean, that’s very concerning.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Jean-Pierre’s lawyers and Biden’s office but did not immediately receive a response.
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