A senior aide to former President Joe Biden admitted under oath that he had a direct financial incentive to hide Biden’s worsening cognitive health during the 2024 campaign, as revealed by a bombshell video released Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee.
The footage, part of a closed-door deposition made public by Chairman James Comer (R-KY), shows longtime Biden adviser Mike Donilon squirming and pausing repeatedly before acknowledging that he was promised a $4 million bonus if Biden had won reelection — in addition to an already-lucrative $4 million base salary.
The exchange, which unfolded during the committee’s investigation into what lawmakers call the “autopen scandal,” appears to confirm what several whistleblowers had previously alleged: that senior staff members were financially motivated to conceal the president’s physical and mental decline from voters, donors, and even some Cabinet officials during the 2024 election cycle.
“Would you have received a bonus depending on the way the campaign went?” a congressional investigator asked Donilon.
Donilon hesitated before replying: “Yes, there was.”
“And what were those circumstances?” the investigator pressed.
“That Joe Biden would have been reelected President of the United States,” Donilon finally said.
“What would the bonus have been?”
“Um, I believe it would have been $4 million,” Donilon confirmed.
The revelation has triggered new calls from House Republicans for the Justice Department to expand its ongoing probe into financial impropriety and potential obstruction of oversight related to Biden’s inner circle.
Donilon, one of Biden’s longest-serving strategists, helped craft the president’s public image and was often described as the “emotional center” of the West Wing during the 2020 and 2024 campaigns. Internal records obtained by the Oversight Committee show that he continued to advise the president and coordinate communications strategy even as Biden’s public appearances grew increasingly limited in 2023 and 2024.
Chairman Comer said the interview was “a smoking gun” proving that political operatives close to Biden had strong personal and financial motives to mislead the public about his condition.
“Mike Donilon admitted under oath that he stood to make millions if Joe Biden could hold it together long enough to cross the finish line in 2024,” Comer said in a statement. “That bonus wasn’t about merit — it was about maintaining the illusion of competence. It’s corruption by incentive.”
The committee’s investigation into Biden’s health disclosures and the now-infamous “autopen” controversy — in which aides allegedly used mechanical signature devices to approve executive orders while Biden was incapacitated — has unearthed what congressional investigators describe as “a systemic pattern of deceit.”
Multiple senior aides have reportedly invoked their Fifth Amendment rights, refusing to answer questions about the president’s cognitive state, daily schedule, and medical supervision in the final year of his presidency.
“Several witnesses were unwilling to say when they last saw President Biden conscious and responsive,” a Republican staff memo summarizing the interviews states. “The culture of silence around his condition was driven by fear — and, as we now know, by money.”
Democrats on the committee dismissed the video as “selectively edited” and politically motivated, but even some former Biden allies privately conceded that the optics are disastrous.
“It looks terrible,” one Democratic strategist told Politico on Tuesday. “The fact that they were offering multimillion-dollar incentives to keep him on the ticket when everyone knew what was going on — that’s indefensible.”
According to the committee, Donilon’s employment contract was negotiated directly through the Biden Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that collected hundreds of millions from Democratic megadonors in 2023 and 2024.
The structure of the bonus, investigators say, tied his compensation explicitly to “the successful reelection of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.” — a clause that they argue incentivized suppression of any damaging information about Biden’s deteriorating condition.
Sources familiar with the probe said that other White House aides were also offered performance-based payouts linked to the 2024 campaign’s outcome, though none on the scale of Donilon’s.
While Donilon maintained during the interview that he never “lied” about Biden’s health, his testimony appeared to contradict earlier public statements in which he insisted the president was “as sharp and focused as ever.”