Michael LaRosa, press secretary for former first lady Jill Biden, told Newsmax on Monday that a book about an alleged White House conspiracy to cover up Joe Biden's reported cognitive decline did not accurately portray Jill Biden's influence over him while he was president.
"Original Sin," written by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson, alleges that Jill Biden was a behind-the-scenes power broker who helped prop up her husband as his mental and physical decline became harder to hide. It asserts that she sat in on job interviews for White House staff, kept score of which aides were most loyal, and reviewed campaign ads before they aired.
"She did not sit in on every interview for White House staffers," LaRosa told "National Report." "She did probably sit in and, if I can recall, she probably sat in on very senior-level hires of the White House of the West Wing, I would say. That sounds right.
"But she didn't lead meetings, or she was not involved in policymaking or decision-making on anything like that. Of course, she was always looking out for his best interests when it came to very senior-level hires."
LaRosa was Jill Biden's press secretary from January 2021 to July 2022, as well as a spokesman for the former president's 2020 campaign, but was not in the White House for the final 2½ years of the Biden presidency.
"What she did have [was] extraordinary influence over the sort of the everyday aspect of the president's life as it was being managed: the privacy, his schedule, his travel," LaRosa said. "She didn't take a fine-tooth comb to it. But she did keep track of that.
"And our team was very integrated into the West Wing because we were seen as a partner to them because we would go out and stump for the president's agenda. So, it was a very integrated operation for sure."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.