Unlikely Senate Duo Crosses The Aisle To Help End Government Shutdown
Ex-Biden White House spokesman says he only saw 46th president twice in two-plus years of service
WASHINGTON — Former White House spokesman Ian Sams spoke face-to-face with his boss, President Biden, on just two occasions during his more than two years in the administration, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) told reporters Thursday.
“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.
The two interactions, which the chairman described in a subsequent statement as “very limited,” were in addition to a virtual meeting Sams joined involving the 46th president and a phone call with Biden.
“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.
Sams, who sat for a little more than three hours with committee staff and departed without answering reporter questions, had characterized the Hur report as “false” and including “inappropriate personal comments.”
Hur determined that Biden, now 82, deliberately retained sensitive files from his vice presidency and Senate career — but declined to bring charges, in part because he believed jurors would view the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
One Biden White House colleague who worked with Sams throughout his employment there found it credible that he had virtually no access to Biden— noting both that Sams’ office was in the next-door Eisenhower Executive Office Building rather than the West Wing, and that he typically interacted with intermediaries such as communications chief Anita Dunn and White House counsels Staurt Delery and Ed Siskel.
Another Biden alum said Sams appeared to get his “marching orders” from Dunn and that the two face-to-face meetings Sams testified to were “more than I thought.”
“He [Sams] had zero contact with him [Biden],” this person added.
Sams served as a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office from mid-2022 to August 2024, when he left to serve as a senior adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
“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?”
In their tell-all tome on the Biden White House, journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson quoted one source familiar with its inner workings as saying: “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”
The “Original Sin” co-authors said those aides — including senior adviser Mike Donilon, counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti and deputy White House chief of staff Bruce Reed — as well as first lady Jill Biden and first son Hunter Biden formed a sort of “politburo” for undertaking big decisions.
Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain and former senior adviser to the president Annie Tomasini were also at times part of the inner circle, Thompson and Tapper noted.
Thursday’s interview was the 11th with a former Biden aide centered on the purported cover-up of the 46th president’s decline, which Republican investigators believe may have involved the improper wielding 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.”
Oversight lawmakers have already interviewed Donilon, Ricchetti, Reed and Klain as part of their investigation.
