Confused Biden Got ‘Lost in Closet’ According to Secret Service Leak
Sen. Josh Hawley told the anecdote on Fox News to support rumors about the former president’s declining mental acuity.
A Secret Service whistleblower revealed that former President Joe Biden would get “lost in his closet” some mornings in the White House, a MAGA senator has claimed.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told Fox News that the agent, who was assigned to Biden’s detail, told him the story to illustrate his cognitive challenges while in office.
“He told me that Biden used to get lost in his closet in the mornings at the White House,” Hawley told host Sean Hannity.
Biden allegedly got lost in his bedroom closet while in the White House.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The senator, a fierce ally of President Donald Trump who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had spoken to many Secret Service agents while investigating the assassination attempts on Trump last year.
“I mean, the guy literally stumbling around in the White House residence couldn’t find his way out of his own closet,” Hawley added. “The president of the United States.”
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Hawley was using the anecdote to illustrate why reports about Biden’s declining mental acuity could constitute the biggest presidential scandal in history.
Sen. Josh Hawley is an ally of Donald Trump.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
“This is outrageous. We were lied to,” he said in the Friday interview.
A spokesperson for Biden did not return the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
While there have long been questions about Biden’s age and mental sharpness, concerns have surged over the last month with the publication of Original Sin, a book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, which argues that a circle of aides and loved ones covered up Biden’s decline.
The book features firsthand accounts from Biden insiders about the president’s mental confusion. In one case, aides considered getting Biden a wheelchair if he won re-election. In another, Biden reportedly did not recognize a longtime friend, the actor George Clooney, at a fundraising event.
Congressional Republicans have launched investigations into Biden’s fitness while in office. Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, for one, has touted the fact that he is looking into Biden’s use of an autopen to sign orders, arguing that they may be invalid. Legal experts dispute this conclusion.
Biden, 82, who announced that he has an aggressive prostate cancer as news from the book broke, sarcastically pushed back on its claims—and challenged its authors to a fight.
Biden fired back on claims about his cognitive decline this week.
Ken Cedeno/Reuters
“You can see that I’m mentally incompetent, and I can’t walk, and I can beat the hell out of both of them,” he told a CNN reporter, seemingly referring to Tapper and Thompson.
Concerns about Biden’s mental acuity forced him out of the 2024 presidential race—but only after a disastrous June debate against Trump. It left his replacement, former Vice President Kamala Harris, little more than three months to campaign.
“I don’t have any regrets,” he told CNN. “I think we’re at one of those inflection points in history, where the decisions we make in the next little bit are going to determine what things look like for the next 20 years.”
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