Dr. O’Connor’s Silence Fuels Suspicions About Biden’s Declining Health
What Are The Democrats Hiding?
The Democrats’ seemingly endless political train wreck continued to get worse yesterday when Dr. Kevin O’Connor, White House physician to President Joe Biden, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights before the House Oversight Committee.
President Joe Biden’s former White House physician refused on Wednesday to answer questions as part of the House Republican investigation into Biden’s health in office.
Dr. Kevin O’Connor invoked his rights under the Fifth Amendment during a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee, his attorney and lawmakers said.
From the legal perspective, we may not impute to Dr. O’Connor any criminality, nor view his invoking his Fifth Amendment rights as any sort of admission of guilt.
The court of public opinion, however, is not a court of law and people in and out of the media will inevitably form their own opinions about O’Connor pleading the fifth. Indeed, alternative media had already been forming a highly suspicious opinion of his efforts to avoid testifying even before he actually appeared before the Committee.
Committee Chairman Congressman James Comer wasted no time in forming his opinion, blasting O’Connor’s decision as “proof” there was a conspiracy surrounding Biden’s mental health while in office.
Whether Comer is right or wrong in his conclusion I leave for the reader to decide.
However, O’Connor’s refusal to testify does present some very awkward questions for both sides of the political aisle.
Republicans are wading into the ethical minefield known as patient confidentiality. According to Dr. O’Connor’s lawyers, patient confidentiality is a key factor in his refusal to testify.
“Earlier today, Dr. Kevin O’Connor asserted the physician-patient privilege, as well as his right under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in declining to answer questions from the staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding his service as Physician to the President during the Biden Administration,” the statement from O’Connor’s legal counsel said.
Patient confidentiality is not merely a talking point. Confidentiality is a signature component of the American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics1. The World Medical Association has taken a strong stand on confidentiality and privacy for decades2, and has made privacy a key element of its Declaration of Geneva (“The Physician’s Pledge”)3 since 1948.
We should note that patient confidentiality is not absolute, and it is not necessarily guaranteed as a matter of law.
There are multiple state and federal laws that protect confidentiality, but as the AMA points out it's a "crazy quilt" of law. There are privacy regulations, and specific legislations targeted toward protecting information such as HIV status and the like. So what protection you may be given might depend heavily on where you live.
While the ethical foundations of Dr. O’Connor’s assertion of patient confidentiality are extremely sound, the legal basis is anything but. While not a court of law, testimony before a Congressional committee is still sworn testimony, is still a legal proceeding akin to a deposition, and can carry legal consequences.
Republicans might have the law on their side, but the extent to which ethics and morality are in their favor is not quite so certain. There is a risk of they may go “too far” in their investigations, and that could spark a public opinion backlash.
On the other side of the coin, O’Connor has a small problem of ethical consistency, as he has already made public statements about Joe Biden’s health—and that is a very large problem for the Democrats.
At the end of February, 2024, Dr. O’Connor released a summary of Biden’s latest (last?) physical exam, complete with the following concluding statement:
President Biden is a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State, and Commander in Chief.
This was not long after Special Counsel Robert Hur released his report declining to prosecute Biden for mishandling classified documents for reasons of age and mental infirmity.
If Dr. O’Connor did not grasp that his health summary was distinctly at odds with Robert Hur’s conclusions about Joe Biden’s mental state, we should question the quality of his medical judgement. That Democrats even now cannot grasp this merely confirms that, as a party, they are provably insane.
In July of last year, Dr. O’Connor doubled down on his assessment of Joe Biden’s fitness in a statement he released to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
This statement came amid the explosion of controversy after Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump and the unraveling of the lawfare cases against Trump.
These were public statements made publicly. There can be no expectation of privacy regarding the contents of these statements. For patient confidentiality to hold sway over those statements, they would have had to not have been made public. Having been made public, they are subject to interrogation and inquisition by anyone—including a Republican Congress.
Those public statements are now a problem for Democrats which O’Connor’s decision to invoke his right against self-incrimination only magnifies. Every public statement is, by definition, not private and not confidential. Once something is in the hands of the media—any media—claims of privacy are fundamentally done.
O’Connor choosing to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights invites speculation about the honesty and accuracy of his public statements regarding Joe Biden’s physical and mental health. Legal standards of evidence are of no relevance in the court of public opinion, and are certainly no impediment to the formation of political opinions. With or without the Constitution and the Fifth Amendment, such is the nature of public discourse.
The question naturally arises that, if those statements are defensible, why does Dr. O’Connor not want to defend them? Why will he not stand firmly behind his own words?
Had O’Connor taken the position that he would only discuss those public statements, and that he would not venture beyond them in terms of medical disclosures nor would he speculate on Joe Biden’s health then or now, his ethical position would be unassailable, and he might even garner a modicum of public support for a solid, principled stand.
Dr. O’Connor did not take that position. Instead, having made public disclosures about Biden’s health, Dr. O’Connor chose to hide behind claims of patient confidentiality. Such blatantly self-serving claims automatically engender considerable speculation regarding who knew what about Joe Biden’s mental acuity and when. James Comer is not wrong to say it adds “fuel to the fire”.
O’Connor’s decision not to participate in the committee probe sparked a rebuke from the Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who told reporters that the physician’s choice to invoke the 5th Amendment “adds more fuel to the fire that there was a cover up” of Biden’s mental fitness and vowed to continue the investigation.
One important point should always be remembered about patient confidentiality: it is to serve the interests of the patient, not the physician. Patient confidentiality is certainly not intended to serve the interests of White House staffers who may or may not have had Joe Biden’s best interests uppermost in their minds while discharging their White House duties. Kevin O’Connor retreating behind patient confidentiality after breaching patient confidentiality last year appears to serve Dr. O’Connor and those White House staffers far more than it serves Joe Biden—and that is not in keeping with either the AMA or the WMA position on patient confidentiality.
Had O’Connor stuck to his earlier habit of not commenting on Biden’s physical and mental health he would be on firmer ground in arguing patient confidentiality now.
Kevin O’Connor chose to speak publicly about Biden’s health. At a minimum, Congress is well within its rights to question him about those public statements. Democrats can object all they want, but with each objection comes the public relations nightmare of the question already posed in alternative media: “what are they trying to hide?”
It certainly does not help the Democrats that yet another book is coming out detailing the chaos of Biden’s shambolic primary campaign last year. Joe Biden might be suffering from advancing dementia, but when it came to the campaign his staffers and political inner circle were undeniably inept, incompetent, and idiotic.
A dementia patient supported by a three-ring circus of political ineptitude is hardly a foundation for any sort of Democrat resurgence against Donald Trump.
Nor does it help the Democrats that we are reminded yet again of how they could conclude that a senile Joe Biden was a better opponent against Donald Trump then a conscious and presumably competent Kamala Harris, whose capacity for political cringe was seemingly infinite, as demonstrated by the recent revelation that one of Harris’ attempts to mimic Trump sitting for three hours with Joe Rogan was so embarrassingly bad that her own people squashed the interview.
It says something about the state of the Democratic Party that their most articulate spokesperson in 2024 was apparently an octagenarian with advanced dementia—and yet that is exactly what the Democratic Party concluded about itself in 2024. That is proven many times over, and the Democratic Party will not be able to unprove it, now or ever.
The Democrats are trapped with Joe Biden. They are trapped by the sheer incompetence of Kamala Harris and the rest of Biden’s Administration. As Dr. O’Connor proved once again, they dare not talk about Joe Biden or his Administration. They cannot talk about Biden and so they cannot defend Biden.
Thanks to the Biden Administration’s fondness for the autopen, however, the Republicans positively enjoy talking about Biden, and the legal ramifications of the White House staff knowingly concealing his declining mental state. Every revelation, every public disclosure, and now invocations of rights against self-incrimination fuel a a growing narrative of corruption and malfeasance rivaling Watergate.
Will that growing narrative eventually produce criminal prosecutions? It may, although at present the prudent assessment is still that prosecutions are unlikely.
Still, that narrative is growing, and the Democrats are powerless to stop it. With or without prosecutions, the more the narrative of a “palace coup”, where someone besides Joe Biden was making Presidential decisions, becomes fixed in the public’s mind, the less likely the Democrats will prosper during next year’s mid-term elections. That much political treachery is likely to be a bit much for all but the extreme fringes of the electorate.
At a minimum, Joe Biden’s dementia is stifling debate within the Democratic Party about Biden’s Presidential legacy, and that is a major obstacle preventing the party from forming a platform and agenda for 2026 and beyond. Within the core of the Democratic establishment, Joe Biden is the only talking point that exists, and the only talking point that can exist. That is lethal to a party out of power, which needs a fresh agenda so they can work on recapturing the voters they lost in the last election.
Dr. O’Connor’s decision to plead the fifth merely cements Joe Biden’s dementia firmly in place, preventing Democrats from moving past it. He may have helped himself and Biden’s inner circle for the moment, but he has done the Democrats overall no favors whatsoever.
The story of Joe Biden’s dementia while in the Oval Office is far from over, and Democrats have no choice but to be a part of that story as it unfolds. With or without indictments and trials, this remains the Democrats worst political nightmare imaginable.
American Medial Association. AMA Code Of Medical Ethics Opinion 3.2.1: Confidentiality. https://code-medical-ethics.ama-assn.org/ethics-opinions/confidentiality.
World Medical Association. WMA Statement on Patient Advocacy and Confidentiality. 27 Sept. 2022, https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-statement-on-patient-advocacy-and-confidentiality/.
World Medical Association. WMA Declaration of Geneva (“The Physician’s Pledge”). 30 May 2024, https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-geneva/.
So, simple question here. If the 5th Amemdment is about self incrimination, what is the crime he doesn’t want to self incriminate on ? This has nothing to do with patient confidentially.
It’s like the DNC’s whole campaign strategy these last four years was “but Trump” in public and a combination of “nah, it’ll be fine” and “we’ll worry about it when we get there” in private.