President Joe Biden stands with his son Hunter Biden after the president arrived at the Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, June 11, 2024.
Anna Rose Layden | Reuters
Hunter Biden said in a new interview that his father, former President Joe Biden, had been taking Ambien in the period before his first presidential debate last June against then-candidate Donald Trump, and that the prescription sleeping pill contributed to his disastrous performance.
“I’ll tell you what, I know exactly what happened in that debate,” Hunter Biden told independent journalist Andrew Callaghan in a lengthy interview published Monday, exactly one year after Biden abruptly withdrew from the 2024 presidential race.
“He flew around the world basically … he’s 81 years old, he’s tired as s—, they give him Ambien to be able to sleep, he gets up on the stage and he looks like he’s a deer in the headlights,” the younger Biden said.
Joe Biden’s live debate performance was marked by stumbling, meandering answers and a quiet, raspy voice that took viewers by surprise and immediately raised questions about Biden’s fitness to serve another term.
A little over a month after the debate, Biden announced he was dropping out of the presidential race, clearing the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to secure the Democratic nomination.
Biden’s campaign staff at the time attributed his hoarse voice to a “cold.”
And Biden himself later said that his poor performance was due in part to a packed travel schedule before the showdown with Trump.
Biden had traveled to Europe twice in the month leading up to the debate, but he was back in Washington, D.C., almost two weeks before the debate.
Hunter Biden’s remarks were the first time anyone close to Biden has mentioned Ambien in connection with the former president’s debate performance.
The remarks are also likely to serve as fodder for a Republican-led House Oversight Committee investigation into Biden’s mental acuity during the final year of his presidency.
As part of that investigation, three Biden administration officials — Annie Tomasini, Biden’s deputy chief of staff; Anthony Bernal, chief of staff to former First Lady Jill Biden; and Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who served as Biden’s White House doctor — have been called to give closed-door depositions before the committee about Biden’s cognitive fitness.
All three have invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and declined to answer questions.
It’s not uncommon for witnesses to invoke their constitutional right against self-incrimination when called before highly politicized congressional investigations.
During the Democrat-led probes of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and Trump’s efforts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election, more than two dozen witnesses declined to answer questions by invoking their rights.
