Ex-Biden Official Gives Jaw-Dropping Testimony To House Oversight

Ian Sams—who served as a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office from mid‑2022 to August 2024—revealed in bombshell testimony before the House Oversight Committee that he had only seen former President Joe Biden in person twice during his entire tenure.

The startling admission is fueling renewed questions over who was truly making decisions inside the Biden White House.

Sams told lawmakers that in addition to the two face-to-face encounters, he had one Zoom-style meeting and just a single phone call with the president over more than two years. His role involved fielding questions from the press and issuing statements on behalf of the administration’s legal responses—yet his direct access to the commander-in-chief was practically nonexistent.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) told reporters Thursday, “This was a huge interview today, and I think it contradicts everything that the former Biden people are saying with respect to the president’s mental fitness.” Comer went on to call Sams’ testimony “one of the most shocking” interviews the committee has conducted so far.

Sams explained that his office was physically based in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building—not the West Wing—meaning communication often flowed through senior intermediaries such as senior adviser Anita Dunn or legal counsel. He admitted he was surprised by major moves from the president, including the highly controversial pardon of Hunter Biden and the unprecedented clemency granted to other family members not even under indictment.

“In fact, [former special counsel] Robert Hur spent more time with Joe Biden than Ian Sams,” Comer said, pointing to the prosecutor’s two-day interview with the president during the classified documents probe into whether Biden “willfully” kept sensitive records.

Another former Biden aide remarked that Sams seemed to receive his “marching orders” from Anita Dunn, adding that the two in-person meetings Sams acknowledged were actually “more than I thought.”

“He [Sams] had zero contact with him [Biden],” the aide continued.

Comer and other GOP members on the panel pointed to Sams’s account as evidence of a deeply insulated and potentially opaque governing structure.

“It raises serious concerns and serious questions about who was calling shots at the White House,” Comer argued. “If the White House spokesperson was being shielded from the president of the United States, who was operating the Oval Office?” he asked.

The testimony adds weight to long-standing concerns about the decision-making structure inside the Biden administration. A number of reports, including the book Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Jeremy Thompson, describe a tightly controlled inner circle—or “politburo”—of senior aides and family members including Jill Biden, Hunter Biden, Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, and Bruce Reed. According to the authors, this group often ran key policy and political decisions, sometimes without Biden’s direct involvement.

Republicans are now calling for further investigation into the flow of decision-making within the administration and whether Biden himself was actively involved—or simply presented as the public face of decisions made by others behind closed doors.