Summary
- Ian Sams met President Biden twice in over two years.
- Sams served as White House spokesman.
- Information revealed by Rep. James Comer Thursday.
- Meetings described as face-to-face encounters.
- Highlights limited direct contact in administration.
The two exchanges, which the chairman later called "very limited," came in addition to a phone conversation with Biden and a virtual meeting Sams participated in with the 46th president.
“This was a huge interview today, and I think it contradicts everything that the former Biden people are saying with respect to the president’s mental fitness,”
argued Comer, describing Sams’ appearance as “one of the most shocking” sit-downs yet.
Sams, who spent just over three hours sitting with committee officials before leaving without responding to questions from reporters, had called the Hur report "false" and including "inappropriate personal comments."
“In fact, [former special counsel] Robert Hur spent more time with Joe Biden than Ian Sams,”
added Comer, in reference to the prosecutor’s two-day interview with the president while investigating whether Biden “willfully” kept national security documents.
Hur concluded that the 82-year-old Biden purposefully kept private documents from his time as vice president and senator, but he chose not to pursue charges, partly because he thought the president would be perceived by jurors as an "older man with a poor memory."
Sams had virtually no access to Biden, according to a Biden White House colleague who worked with him during his tenure there. He pointed out that Sams' office was located in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door, not the West Wing, and that he usually dealt with White House counsels Staurt Delery and Ed Siskel as well as communications chief Anita Dunn.
Sams seemed to receive his "marching orders" from Dunn, according to another Biden alum, and the two in-person meetings Sams testified to were "more than I thought."
“It raises serious concerns and serious questions about who was calling shots at the White House,”
Comer alleged.
“If the White House spokesperson was being shielded from the president of the United States, who was operating the Oval Office?”
Co-authors of "Original Sin" claimed that those aides, which included first lady Jill Biden, first son Hunter Biden, senior adviser Mike Donilon, president Steve Ricchetti's counselor, and deputy White House chief of staff Bruce Reed, formed a kind of "politburo" for making important decisions.
According to Thompson and Tapper, the inner group occasionally included former White House chief of staff Ron Klain and former senior adviser to the president Annie Tomasini.
The 11th interview with a former Biden aide, conducted Thursday, focused on the alleged cover-up of the decline of the 46th president, which Republican investigators suspect may have involved inappropriate use of executive authority.
“There were very few people around Joe Biden, especially at the end,”
Comer said,
“and that’s when the majority of the pardons and executive orders were signed with that autopen.”
Senior Department of Justice officials chastised Zients in a July interview for approving several late pardons that Biden was not fully aware of.
The Post examined other correspondence and discovered that the DOJ was aware of almost a dozen people charged with violent crimes, despite the fact that roughly 2,500 allegedly "nonviolent" drug offenders had their sentences shortened.
According to Comer, Sams expressed his surprise to Oversight panel members and advisers that Joe Biden had granted preemptive clemency to Biden family members and their spouses who were not indicted, as well as pardoned Hunter after his conviction for tax and weapons offenses.
A request for comment was not immediately answered by Biden's representatives.
How credible are Sams' claims given his limited contact with Biden?
Sams was one of Biden's most vocal defenders during critical investigations but was not in a position to have firsthand knowledge of the president’s mental or physical condition due to minimal direct interaction.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer highlighted that Sams derived most of his information and direction from Biden’s inner circle and the White House Counsel’s Office, rather than from Biden himself.
Comparatively, special counsel Robert Hur spent more time with Biden and offered a nuanced assessment that Biden is an elderly man with memory challenges, contrasting Sams' public denials of any cognitive issues.