Democrats boycotted the first congressional hearing centered on allegations of how President Biden’s White House covered up his mental decline.
Senate Republicans said Democrats ditched the hearing because they did not want to discuss their party’s own cover-up.
Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who co-chaired the hearing with Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, said Mr. Biden’s decline could be seen at the beginning of the former president’s term and that he was the first senator to formally call for the invocation of the 25th Amendment against Mr. Biden.
“I sent letters to every Cabinet secretary and the Vice President [Kamala Harris], laying out the urgent case. Our nation was effectively without a leader,” Mr. Schmitt said. He said the absence of a “functioning president” impacted “every aspect of American life,” such as chaos at the border and “haphazard and reckless” decisions on foreign policy that escalated conflicts around the globe.
Mr. Cornyn played video clips from the 2024 presidential debate between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, which triggered calls for Mr. Biden to end his reelection campaign. He said Congress must “grapple with these difficult questions, no matter how much our Democratic colleagues would like to simply sweep it under the rug.”
“We need to know who was in charge during the last months of the Biden administration. Was it his wife, his chief of staff? Nameless others? None of these people were elected by the American people,” Mr. Cornyn said. “But in this instance, the vice president and the cabinet, the very ones authorized by the 25th Amendment, to question the president’s capacity, they did nothing,” he said.
The 25th Amendment of the Constitution provides an avenue of succession in cases of presidential incapacity. Section four gives the vice president and a majority of the president’s Cabinet the authority to challenge the president’s ability to carry out the functions of his office, subject to a vote in Congress.
The hearing included testimony from former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer, professor John Harrison of the University of Virginia School of Law School and Heritage Foundation Visiting Fellow Theodore Wold.
The House Oversight Committee has launched its own investigation into whether Mr. Biden was mentally fit to serve in the Oval Office. The panel has scheduled interviews with several senior Biden White House officials to collect information.
Only Democratic Sens. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Peter Welch of Vermont attended the beginning of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s meeting Wednesday morning. Mr. Durbin, the top Democrat, immediately left after describing the hearing as a distraction from other issues in the panel’s jurisdiction.
“Instead of exercising this constitutional oversight duty, my Republican colleagues are holding this hearing,” Mr. Durbin said. “Apparently armchair diagnosing former President Biden is more important than the issues of grave concern, which … this committee should be addressing.”
He said the Trump administration “has removed dozens of senior career prosecutors and FBI officials with decades of national security expertise, leaving our nation more vulnerable to terrorism and other national security threats. This should be explained to this committee.”
Mr. Durbin, who also said the panel is ignoring President Trump’s “mass deportation campaign,” played a video compilation of Mr. Trump’s most controversial statements and cited them as examples of erratic behavior, which he said could be used to question Mr. Trump’s cognitive abilities.
“Do any of these statements raise a question of cognitive ability? You be the judge. If my colleagues are truly interested in issues of presidential succession and disability under the 25th Amendment,” he said. “I would suggest they embark on this constitutional journey with a proposed amendment, not today’s political adventure.”
Mr. Welch exited the hearing room after saying that the proceedings did not help his constituents.
Mr. Schmitt called the Democrats’ nonattendance “deeply disappointing, but not surprising.”
“Their absence speaks volumes, an implicit admission that the truth is too inconvenient to face. By refusing to engage in this critical examination, they abdicate the responsibility to the American people,” he said.
