For the next five months, Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor will be one of the most powerful people in the world.
The White House physician is the chief medical arbiter of Joe Biden’s fitness to continue as commander in chief in a war-torn world until the end of his term in January. Even as the public has long expressed concern about the 81-year-old president’s mental capacities and Democratic Party leaders pressured Biden to drop his bid for a second term, O’Connor has repeatedly given his boss a clean bill of health.
As Republicans demand that the president be removed from office under the 25th amendment -- and warn that adversaries such as China or Iran could use the lengthy lame-duck period to test Biden -- O’Connor’s opinion looms as perhaps their biggest obstacle.
Dr. O’Connor insists Biden is in “excellent” shape to finish out his term, and finds no reason to test him for cognitive functioning as many prominent doctors have recommended. “We don’t need to. He’s here every day,” he told a reporter last month in an impromptu interview at the White House, echoing Biden’s reasoning that the daily performance of his duties is proof enough of his mental acuity.
Growing numbers of people are questioning his medical judgment because O’Connor is much more than a doctor to the president. Records show that he is also a longtime friend, personal adviser, political donor, former paid campaign worker, and even a business consultant to the Biden family.
A former White House physician who attended to both Barack Obama and Donald Trump claims O’Connor has been trying to “cover up” Biden’s deteriorating condition to appease the first family, with whom he’s formed a tight bond over the past 15 years.
“Kevin O’Connor was in that job on Day One of the Biden administration because they knew they could trust Kevin to say and do anything that needed to be said or done, and cover up whatever needed to be covered up,” Dr. Ronny Jackson, now a Republican congressman, said in a recent interview. “He is part of the Biden family.”
Running a White House medical unit with a staff of roughly 60, O’Connor has been the most reticent – some would say secretive – White House physician in the modern presidency. Even after treating Biden for COVID infections, he has avoided speaking to the press. He’s also declined to be interviewed by a medical reporter even though such interviews are customary, not to mention imperative given that Biden is the nation’s oldest president – and one with a history of brain aneurysms. Instead, the doctor runs all inquiries through White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, who generally speaks for him.
The position of White House physician is intended to be non-partisan. O’Connor insists he serves the office, not the politician occupying it, and stays impartial regardless of politics. He claims to be “apolitical,” and suggests Biden doesn’t care to know which way he leans. “He’s never asked me if I am a Republican or a Democrat,” according to an interview published in the alumni newsletter of O’Connor’s alma mater, New York Institute of Technology, when he worked for Vice President Biden.
However, federal and state election records reveal O’Connor has donated thousands of dollars exclusively to Democratic politicians and causes – including Joe Biden’s own campaign.
- In 2016, O’Connor gave $500 to the Democratic campaign of Francis “Franny” Person, Biden’s former driver and body man who left the White House in 2014 to go into business with a Chinese investor before running for a congressional seat in South Carolina, according to Federal Election Commission data. (Emails show Person frequently communicated with Hunter Biden about Chinese business schemes; he even asked his Chinese partner, Bo Zhang, to help pay off Hunter’s mounting debts. In turn, Hunter solicited donations on behalf of Person during his unsuccessful 2016 bid for Congress, while Joe Biden hosted fundraisers for him.)
- In 2019, O’Connor contributed $250 to Joe Biden, plus another $473 to Biden For President through the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, in almost three dozen small payments, FEC records show.
- In 2020, O’Connor gave at least $304 to Biden For President, according to the FEC.
- That same year, he also donated $25 to the Defeat Republicans PAC.
- In 2019-2020, the doctor contributed several hundred dollars to various Democratic candidates through ActBlue.
- In 2022, O’Connor gave $50 to Democrat Shawn Livingston, a local Maryland politician who campaigned on allocating funds from Biden’s Build Back Better initiatives.
O’Connor’s political activity hasn’t stopped with donations. He also worked on Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and was paid at least $4,330 through the Biden For President account for “travel” and “mileage,” FEC filings reveal. It’s not clear if O’Connor’s role in the campaign was limited to medical advice.
The man Biden simply calls “Doc” first started working for him in 2009, and soon became deeply involved in Biden family affairs. He grew particularly close to Jill Biden. “Kevin O’Connor is like a son to Jill Biden – she loves him,” said Dr. Jackson, who left the White House for Congress, where he now represents Amarillo, Texas, as a Republican. “I believe he and Jill Biden have led the cover-up” of the president’s health problems.
A White House source who works with the Secret Service, and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said O’Connor sees the president every morning and spends a lot of time in the White House residence. The doctor, who flies with the president on Air Force One, also vacations with the Bidens in Nantucket every Thanksgiving, even going on shopping sprees with family members.
O’Connor has doubled as a political aide and media consultant, advising Biden on what was “good press” and bad press. When Biden was vice president, the doctor recommended he cancel a foreign trip to hide the fact “you look like shit,” he said, according to a passage in Biden’s memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.” Biden was under the weather and O’Connor warned that his wan and bleary-eyed appearance would end up in an “embarrassing” YouTube video.
The president isn’t O’Connor’s only patient in the Biden family. He’s also treated Biden’s mother after she fell ill while recovering from hip surgery. Catherine Finnegan died in 2010. Years later, he consulted with Biden’s niece, Caroline Biden, about an eye problem. In addition, O’Connor shadowed the late Beau Biden’s medical team from his brain cancer diagnosis in 2013 to his death in 2015.
After a tumor was detected, O’Connor got on the phone with experts in the field and researched the best place for treatment. “Doc was good with Beau,” Biden recalled in his book. He said O’Connor reassured his son: “You’re good. People do survive this, and all the people who do survive this look like you. They’re young. They’re fit. They’re healthy. We will have a plan.”
O’Connor left his White House post to travel with Beau to a hospital in Houston. As he was wheeled into surgery at the medical center there to remove the mass, Beau grabbed O’Connor’s hand and asked, “Doc, promise you’re going to take care of Pop. Seriously, Doc. No matter what happens. Take care of Pop,” Biden recalled in his book. O’Connor then followed Beau into the operating room to help calm him.
After Beau suffered a setback in 2015 and was hospitalized in Philadelphia, “Doc O’Connor agreed to be my eyes and ears at the hospital,” Biden recalled, leaving his medical post at the White House again. The then-vice president had his White House physician not only sit with his son in the ICU room during visiting hours, but also off-hours, well into the night, using his credentials to gain entrance to Beau’s room. O’Connor phoned back to Washington with daily reports to the vice president on his son’s condition. Biden was concerned the demands of his job prevented him from being there at his bedside. But the doctor counseled the vice president not to “dump” his busy schedule, that he would stay with Beau until he was discharged.
After the cancer spread, Beau was transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where on May 30, 2015, he succumbed to the disease. “Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Dad’s White House doctor, stepped forward and solemnly announced time of death: ‘Seven thirty-four p.m.,’” Hunter Biden documented in his own memoir.
Echoing his current rosy descriptions of the president’s health, O’Connor repeatedly downplayed the severity of Beau’s condition.
In 2010, after Beau woke up one morning unable to speak and paralyzed on one side of his body, O’Connor advised the Bidens that he probably suffered something called Todd’s paralysis, which is a common aftereffect of a brain seizure. Three years went by before Beau started experiencing other symptoms and decided to get a brain scan, which found a tumor — a glioblastoma, the fastest-growing type of brain tumor. In the intervening three years, the malignant tumor had grown to the size of a golf ball.
Then in 2015, O’Connor told the Bidens an experimental treatment was working on Beau when in fact it was not working. Months later, when Beau’s cerebral spinal fluid was failing to drain properly, causing swelling on his brain, Biden’s White House doctor suggested to him that “it might be a buildup of dead cancer cells that had sloughed and clogged the draining channel, like leaves in a gutter.” However, this was not the case — O'Connor was again mistaken.
Nonetheless, Biden hailed O’Connor in the acknowledgments of his book: “Thank you for all this … to Kevin O’Connor.”
The Americore Affair
The good doctor did other, unspoken, favors for the Bidens. For instance, emails and other records reveal he helped Biden’s younger brother James, known as “Jimmy,” carry out one of his questionable business schemes.
In 2017, Jimmy Biden enlisted O’Connor to help get the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to refer PTSD patients to private hospitals run by Americore, which, records show, had hired Jimmy based on his access to his powerful brother. He had no experience in the medical industry. Jimmy and the doctor met over lunch in Alexandria, Virginia, to discuss the potentially lucrative plan, which centered on federally subsidized contracts, according to a congressional deposition of Jimmy taken this year. “I saw that as a huge market because the VA was heavily populated by former veterans with this disease [PTSD] and they weren’t getting any help,” Jimmy pitched to O’Connor, a retired U.S. Army colonel, according to his testimony. And “because these rural hospitals were very large [and] there was a lot of empty space [to treat the VA patients].”
O’Connor, in turn, introduced Jimmy to a team of people involved in treating PTSD on military bases and even helped pitch hospitals on “our vision.” For example, Jimmy and Biden’s doctor met with the director of a Pennsylvania hospital that Americore was acquiring. Following their meeting, O’Connor emailed the hospital administrator: “You and your team clearly share our vision. And I look forward to seeing you again in coming months.” Jimmy’s wife Sara, their son Jamie, and Hunter Biden were also involved in the deal, which soon soured when Americore collapsed, forcing the Pennsylvania hospital into bankruptcy. The FBI raided the hospital as part of a probe into unpaid bills and neglected patients.
Despite the failure, Jimmy walked away with $600,000 from Americore, $200,000 of which ended up in Joe Biden’s personal bank account, subpoenaed bank records reveal. (The memo line from his brother’s canceled check states, mysteriously, that it was “For loan repayment.”)
Now the House Oversight Committee is investigating O’Connor’s role in the Americore debacle.
“Dr. O’Connor was involved with the Biden family’s influence-peddling schemes,” panel chairman James Comer said in a recent press release. In a five-page letter to O’Connor, Comer demanded he turn over “all documents and communications in your possession regarding Americore and James Biden [and] make yourself available for a transcribed interview.”
Comer explained that the committee is “concerned your medical assessments [of President Biden] have been influenced by your private business endeavors with the Biden family.”
A spokesman for the Oversight committee told RealClearInvestigations that though O’Connor missed a July 14 deadline to turn over documents, the panel is “in communication with the White House and working to finalize a date for Dr. O’Connor to appear for a transcribed interview.”
While it’s not clear if O’Connor also received Americore-related funds, Jimmy Biden’s attorneys insist the doctor was not compensated for his hospital consultations.
Resisting a Cognitive Test
The question that has arisen is this basic: Are O’Connor’s personal and emotional ties to the president clouding his judgment about the president’s capacities? In a six-page report he released in February, O’Connor stated flatly that “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,” similar to the boilerplate language he used in a 2019 report when Biden was running for president.
Former White House medical colleagues have found it curious that O’Connor has refused to conduct a simple test to measure Biden’s cognitive ability, known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which Trump said he took in 2018 and passed with a perfect score. The MoCA, as it’s called, is typically used as a preliminary screening tool for Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and other neurological disorders.
Biden confirmed in a recent ABC News interview that O’Connor has not performed any neurological tests to measure his cognitive functions – including memory, attention, language and problem-solving – and the president insists he doesn’t need such testing.
Other experts disagreed. Following Biden’s often incoherent debate performance against Trump on June 27, Dr. Lawrence K. Altman, a former medical reporter for the New York Times who is an adjunct professor of medicine at New York University, wrote in STAT News that “It would have been wise for Biden to have taken such a test in February [when O’Connor conducted his last physical], and that he should do so now, if for no other reason than to assure the public of his mental fitness.”
Altman noted in his July 3 article that a “feeble” Biden has shown “signs of aging over the course of his presidency,” including “mental lapses, rambling, mid-sentence stumbles, apparent loss of concentration, open-mouth gaping and flat facial expression.”
According to his last physical, Biden also suffers from high cholesterol, blood-clotting, allergies and acid reflux, and currently takes a host of medications, including Eliquis, Crestor, Dymista, Allegra, Pepcid, and Nexium, to deal with the various maladies. He also has been diagnosed with sleep apnea, and sleeps with a C-PAP machine which delivers continuous airflow through his mouth and nose using a mask and head gear.
“He will be president until January 2025,” Altman wrote. “His health is too important an issue for him and the country to not consider seeking a medical explanation for his performance during the CNN debate.”
CNN’s medical expert, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, agreed, writing on July 5 that Biden “should be encouraged to undergo detailed cognitive- and movement-disorder testing, and those results should be made available to the public.”
Efforts to contact O’Connor through the White House and George Washington University, where he’s listed as an associate professor, were unsuccessful. The White House has not made him available to brief the press during Biden’s almost four years in office – even though previous presidential physicians have taken questions from reporters. Former White House Correspondents’ Association president George Condon, a Pulitzer Prize winner who has interviewed 10 presidents, described O’Connor’s failure to answer questions directly about the president’s health as “the least transparency of any White House in 50 years.”
O’Connor hasn’t snubbed everybody. He recently gave an interview to a medical trade journal in which he acknowledged becoming emotionally attached to the Biden family. “We became close over the years, and I ended up being involved in a lot of important family things,” he told “The D.O.,” a publication of the American Osteopathic Association, in March.
A White House source, a career employee who works with the Secret Service on security issues, questioned O’Connor’s objectivity and warned of possible dangerous consequences if Biden remains in office.
“This is a serious issue of medical ethics,” he said. “The doctor’s clearly in the tank for the Biden family and too conflicted to conduct an independent assessment [of his mental acuity]. And we need a sober assessment. God forbid a major crisis breaks out before the next inauguration.”
The White House source said he fears Biden could fumble the nuclear codes in a DefCon-1 event, such as a nuclear crisis with China. He said in a retaliatory nuclear strike, Biden’s mind would have to be sharp enough to not only recognize the current authentication codes – which are changed regularly – from a number of decoys, but also relay the correct code to the Pentagon using the military phonetic alphabet (“Alfa, Bravo … Zulu”). Then he has to choose from various launch options in a Black Book carried by a military aide in a briefcase known as the “nuclear football.”
Biden has said he operates by what he calls the “70%” rule for making critical decisions, which does not exactly allay concerns about his ability to handle a crisis. He explains in his memoir that when it comes to formulating actions to take in a crisis that demands quick thinking, a president can never expect to get more than “about 70%” of the information needed; and therefore, he must trust his own instincts to arrive at a decision. Absent the requisite facts, data, and intelligence, “you have to be willing to rely on your gut,” Biden wrote. And that was in 2017, when he was several years younger and far more lucid.
Asked Sunday by a CBS News reporter about concerns he doesn’t have the stamina to finish his term, Biden said, “All I can say is, ‘Watch,’” adding, “I have no serious problem.”
Paul Sperry is an investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations. He is also a longtime media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Sperry was previously the Washington bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, and his work has appeared in the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Houston Chronicle, among other major publications.
