BIDEN AUTOPEN USE: WHAT TO KNOW AS TRUMP ORDERS AN INVESTIGATION INTO HIS PREDECESSOR

O’Connor was subpoenaed on June 5 to appear for a deposition after he refused a previous request to appear voluntarily for a transcribed interview on June 25. His lawyers have asked for a delay.

Here’s everything you need to know about Biden’s former White House physician.

Education

O’Connor received his bachelor’s degree in biology from St. Bonaventure University in 1988 on a U.S. Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarship. He then went to medical school at the New York Institute of Technology, where he graduated with a degree in osteopathic medicine in 1992. 

He completed his residency training in family medicine at the Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, New Jersey, and became chief resident in 1995. He became a master flight surgeon in 2010 after completing Army flight surgeon training. 

Personal life

O’Connor lives in Maryland with his wife and three daughters.

Career

O’Connor became a White House physician in 2006. Starting in February 2009, he treated Biden while he was vice president and continued to serve him for the rest of his term.

O’Connor served 22 years in the Army and was deployed to support missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bosnia. In 2017, after retiring from the Army, he joined the George Washington Medical Faculty Associates as director of executive medicine. He also served in senior positions at the George Washington University Hospital, and he still teaches at the university’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences as an associate professor.

Biden administration

After Biden took office as president in January 2021, he appointed O’Connor as the new White House physician, replacing President Donald Trump’s former physician, Dr. Sean Conley. As the physician, O’Connor was on a team of doctors at the White House tasked with taking care of the president and his family’s medical needs, as well as those of White House staff.

Concerns about Biden’s health and mental status were raised before he announced his reelection campaign in April 2023. Those concerns culminated with the announcement that Biden was dropping out of the presidential race in July 2024. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the new candidate.

The same month Biden officials revealed the former president was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, a new book was released, Original Sin, in which CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson discuss Biden’s cognitive decline and how many people attempted to hide it from the public eye.

“One person told us that the presidency was, at best, a five-person board with Joe Biden as chairman of the board,” Tapper told NPR. 

Tapper and Thompson argue that while staff efforts to make Biden appear competent started small and innocent, those efforts turned into a massive cover-up that misled the public.

Autopen investigation

As information about Biden’s mental fitness came to light, the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project released a memorandum in March accusing the president of unlawfully allowing an autopen to be used to sign various orders and pardons. Among the documents the group has analyzed, there were “two identical autopen signatures that were affixed to multiple acts of clemency,” suggesting it wasn’t the president who signed these documents but one or more members of his staff with his automated signature.

BIDEN STEPS INTO SPOTLIGHT TO PUSH BACK AGAINST TRUMP AND DEFEND RECORD

In the following months, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into the Biden administration’s use of the autopen. It has subpoenaed O’Connor and other former Biden officials such as Neera Tanden, former director of the Policy Council; Anthony Bernal, former assistant to the president and senior adviser to the first lady; Annie Tomasini, former assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff; and Ashley Williams, former special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office operations. Tanden is the only official of this group who has testified.

Regarding O’Connor’s hearing, the committee aims to “investigate the circumstances” surrounding O’Connor’s last medical assessment of Biden in February 2024, during which he described Biden as “a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.” It also wants to determine if O’Connor’s “financial relationship” with the Biden family affected his assessments of the former president in any way, according to the initial request from the committee.