The House Oversight Committee’s latest report peels back a troubling layer of the final chapter in Joe Biden’s presidency, painting a picture not just of political misjudgment, but of personal incentives tangled with national consequences. At the center of this scrutiny is Mike Donilon — longtime Biden confidant, chief strategist for both his 2020 and 2024 campaigns, and, as of Tuesday’s revelations, a man whose financial future was directly tied to Biden’s reelection.
According to Donilon’s own testimony, if President Biden had secured a second term in 2024, he would have received a $4 million bonus — a sum on top of the already staggering $4 million base salary he was earning as part of the reelection effort.
The promise, Donilon said, was a guarantee by the campaign. While eye-popping on its own, the figure gains even more gravity when placed within the context of what the committee alleges: that Donilon and other members of Biden’s tight inner circle were financially incentivized to shield the president’s visible decline from the public.
The 100-page Oversight Committee report doesn’t mince words. It alleges a coordinated effort among senior Biden aides to filter the information reaching the president — particularly polling data — and to downplay or obscure the mental and physical struggles that had become increasingly evident to observers, especially following Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June 2024.
That night, marked by confusion, slurred answers, and a vacant demeanor, sent a shockwave through the Democratic Party and sparked the public implosion of Biden’s campaign. He would drop out the following month.
But what was happening before the debate, behind closed doors, may be even more revealing. According to former Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Donilon controlled what polling was shown to Biden, using data compiled by individual contractors.
While Donilon claimed under oath that he was honest with the former president about the polling, the committee suggests otherwise — highlighting a pattern of deliberate optimism that contradicted Biden’s status in the polls, where he was already trailing Trump badly.
Perhaps most damning is the committee’s claim that even after the June debate — when many Democrats privately urged Biden to step aside — Donilon still believed he could win. The report presents this not as loyalty, but as willful denial, fed by the promise of millions and sustained by a deep-rooted inner circle bent on protecting both their legacy and their livelihoods.
The narrative that emerges is a complex but familiar one: power, money, and proximity to influence creating a closed loop where political judgment is warped by personal stakes. And in this case, it wasn’t just about winning a campaign — it was about managing a presidency whose leader, by many accounts, was no longer fully capable of leading.
The 2024 election ended with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket and Donald Trump returning to the White House. But for many, the question remains: how long had Biden’s decline been apparent to those around him — and how much was deliberately hidden?
