Who is Anthony Bernal?: The 'indispensable' Biden aide ditching House Oversight probe on his mental decline
"Jill Biden's longtime aide Anthony Bernal is DEFYING Congress and REFUSING to testify tomorrow about Joe Biden's cognitive decline after the White House waived his executive privilege," the committee posted on X Wednesday after Bernal was expected to testify on Thursday morning.
"He's running scared. The cover-up is collapsing. We will subpoena him immediately."
By proxy, as the first lady's top aide, Bernal became one of the most influential people in the White House, according to recent reports, and he was expected to face tough questions about what he knew and when he knew about Biden's mental decline.
"No one spent more time, whether it was in the motorcade, on the plane, in the private residence at the White House, Camp David, and at both houses in Delaware, nobody spent more personal time around them and their family and the Biden family than Anthony," Democratic strategist Michael LaRosa, who served as press secretary to former first lady Jill Biden, told Fox News Digital.
LaRosa told Fox News Digital that Bernal, former special assistant to Biden and deputy director of Oval Office Operations, was an "indispensable" part of the Biden team whose top priority was "protecting the Bidens," even if it was politically harmful due to a "personal and emotional attachment" that became more of a familial relationship than a professional one.
Fox News Digital previously reported on how the book "Original Sin," by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios political correspondent Alex Thompson, described Bernal as one of the most influential people in the White House who wielded loyalty as a weapon to weed out the defectors.
During the pandemic, Biden traded the campaign trail for lockdown. Bernal and Annie Tomasini, who is expected to testify next month, found their way into Joe and Jill Biden's pod, shifting the power dynamic of Biden's so-called "Politiburo," the group of advisors who steered Biden's political orbit, the book explained.
"The significance of Bernal and Tomasini is the degree to which their rise in the Biden White House signaled the success of people whose allegiance was to the Biden family – not to the presidency, not to the American people, not to the country, but to the Biden theology," the authors wrote.
"Their instincts, to hide the ball on often frivolous issues is what ultimately got them in trouble," LaRosa told Fox News Digital about the "bunker mentality" from Bernal and other aides around Biden.
"Their reflexive need to hide and protect was a deficiency and a blind spot and I never understood it."
A former White House staffer fired back against Tapper and Thompson's allegations about Bernal in a statement to Fox News Digital earlier this year.
"A lot of vignettes in this book are either false, exaggerated, or purposefully omit viewpoints that don't fit the narrative they want to push. Anthony was a strong leader with high standards and a mentor to many. He's the type of person you want on a team - he's incredibly strategic, effective, and cares deeply about the people he manages," the former White House staffer said.
Politico reported in 2021 that Bernal's management style was viewed by some as "toxic" and would sometimes lead to crying staffers.
LaRosa told Fox News Digital that Bernal has a "big heart" but acknowledged he was one of the more "challenging" people he had to work with.
Bernal's appearance before the committee, if it happens, follows testimony from former Biden aide Neera Tanden, who said she was authorized to direct autopen signatures but was unaware of who in the president's inner circle was giving her final clearance.
When Tanden was asked whether she ever discussed Biden's health or his fitness to serve as president during her time as a top aide, including during the period of the former president's widely criticized debate performance last summer, Tanden said she did not. Lawmakers laid out a list of names of officials she could have potentially discussed it with, and Tanden said "no" to each name, according to a source familiar with her closed-door testimony.
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