Former Biden doctor asks to delay testimony to House committee investigating mental fitness
O'Connor was scheduled to testify on Wednesday, but is now in a disagreement with the committee over the scope of the questions he will be expected to answer during his testimony. The committee, led by Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is interviewing the doctor as part of its investigation into Biden's mental fitness and his administration's use of an autopen.
A lawyer for O'Connor requested the testimony be delayed to July 28 or August 4 in a letter to Comer.
"Dr. O'Connor has legal and ethical obligations that he must satisfy and for which violations carry serious consequences to him professionally and personally," the letter says.
"We are unaware of any prior occasion on which a Congressional Committee has subpoenaed a physician to testify about the treatment of an individual patient. And the notion that a Congressional Committee would do so without any regard whatsoever for the confidentiality of the physician-patient relationship is alarming."
A spokesman for the Oversight Committee replied in a statement to NBC News that O'Connor and his legal team were merely trying to "stonewall" the process.
The committee said O'Connor is welcome to object to individual questions during his testimony. But O'Connor is not allowed, in the committee's view, to delay or decline a congressional subpoena due to concerns over questions about potentially privileged information.
The debate over O'Connor's testimony comes weeks after a former top aide to Biden, Neera Tanden, told the Oversight Committee that she was authorized to direct autopen signatures but was unaware of who in the president's inner circle was giving her final clearance.
During Tanden's interview before Congress last month, which lasted more than five hours, she told lawmakers that, in her role as staff secretary and senior advisor to the former president between 2021 and 2023, she was authorized to direct autopen signatures on behalf of Biden, an Oversight Committee official told Fox News.
"Ms. Tanden testified that she had minimal interaction with President Biden, despite wielding tremendous authority," Comer said at the time. "She explained that to obtain approval for autopen signatures, she would send decision memos to members of the President's inner circle and had no visibility of what occurred between sending the memo and receiving it back with approval. Her testimony raises serious questions about who was really calling the shots in the Biden White House amid the President's obvious decline. We will continue to pursue the truth for the American people."
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