Democrats boycott hearing on alleged cover-up of Biden's mental decline [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Wed 18 Jun 2025 11.54 EDT
First published on Wed 18 Jun 2025 11.35 EDT


Senate Democrats staged a near-total boycott of a Republican-led Senate hearing on Wednesday on Joe Biden’s mental decline and its alleged cover-up during his presidency, with only the Vermont senator Peter Welch attending the session. The hearing, titled “Unfit to Serve: How the Biden Cover-Up Endangered America and Undermined the Constitution”, began with the Democratic ranking member, Dick Durbin, launching a counterattack on Donald Trump’s off-kilter comments before walking out of the chamber.

Durbin questioned the focus on Biden’s cognitive abilities while highlighting recent statements by Donald Trump, including his claim after the G7 meeting in Alberta about signing a trade agreement with the EU through Britain – despite the UK leaving the bloc five years ago.

“If we’re going to make a question of cognitive ability, I think we should consider what happened in Alberta, Canada, just this week,” Durbin said, before playing a video compilation of Trump statements including his false claims about migrants “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats” and a hurricane being “one of the wettest we’ve ever seen from the standpoint of water”.

The hearing features three Republican witnesses: the former Trump administration officials Theodore Wold and Sean Spicer and legal scholar John Harrison, with testimony focusing on Biden’s alleged use of an autopen device for signatures and media coverage of presidential mental acuity.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/18/democrats-biden-cover-up