A former White House physician is criticizing Kevin O’Connor after the ex-Biden administration doctor refused to answer questions by House Oversight Committee investigators earlier this week.
Dr. O’Connor, who served as White House physician to former President Joe Biden, sat down for a transcribed interview with committee staff and panel Chair James Comer, R-Ky., on Wednesday. The closed-door meeting lasted roughly 30 minutes, with O’Connor invoking the Fifth Amendment to all questions, save for his name.
His legal team said there were concerns the broad scope of Comer’s probe could force O’Connor into a position of risking doctor-patient confidentiality privileges.
‘Well, you can’t do both,’ Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a former White House doctor himself, told Fox News Digital in an interview afterward.
‘I mean, the Fifth Amendment is designed to keep him from incriminating himself in some type of, you know, criminal or unethical behavior. He’d already addressed the issue of patient-doctor privacy, or confidentiality, with the committee.’
He pointed out that O’Connor’s lawyers had already raised issues with patient-doctor confidentiality in a letter to the committee trying to get the interview delayed, but Comer pressed forward.
‘They had already let him know that in this particular case, because he had been subpoenaed, and it was a legal process, he’d been subpoenaed to testify before Congress in this closed session, that the patient-doctor privilege no longer applied,’ Jackson said. ‘And President Trump had waived presidential privilege. So it left him with nothing. Nothing to stand on except for pleading the Fifth.’
Before being elected to Congress, Jackson served as White House physician to both former President Barack Obama and current President Donald Trump.
Comer told reporters on Wednesday that Jackson played a key role in crafting questions for O’Connor.
‘We have a lot of questions that we’ve prepared for this. We’ve consulted closely with Ronny Jackson, my colleague, who was the White House physician in the first Trump administration. We’ve consulted with a lot of people in the medical community, so there’s going to be a lot of medical questions that are asked,’ he told reporters before the transcribed interview.
He is investigating accusations that Biden’s former top White House aides covered up signs of his mental and physical decline while in office, and whether any executive actions were commissioned via autopen without the president’s full knowledge. Biden allies have pushed back on those claims.
‘The cover-up could not have happened without the assistance and the help of his personal physician, Kevin O’Connor,’ Jackson said. ‘I think that’s why he pled the Fifth, because he realized he was about to implicate himself as a key player in this cover-up.’
O’Connor’s lawyers have denied any implications of guilt.
Jackson said some of the questions he recommended to the committee would have surrounded any potential neurological concerns or cognitive tests while Biden was in office.
But many of those were left unasked, it appears, after O’Connor’s brief meeting with House investigators.
The doctor’s lawyers said O’Connor’s refusal to answer questions on Fifth Amendment grounds was not an admission of guilt, but rather a response to what they saw as an unprecedented investigatory scope that could have violated the bounds of patient-physician privilege.
‘This Committee has indicated to Dr. O’Connor and his attorneys that it does not intend to honor one of the most well-known privileges in our law – the physician patient privilege. Instead, the Committee has indicated that it will demand that Dr. O’Connor reveal, without any limitations, confidential information regarding his medical examinations, treatment, and care of President Biden,’ the attorney statement said.
‘Revealing confidential patient information would violate the most fundamental ethical duty of a physician, could result in revocation of Dr. O’Connor’s medical license, and would subject Dr. O’Connor to potential civil liability. Dr. O’Connor will not violate his oath of confidentiality to any of his patients, including President Biden.’
Fox News Digital reached out to O’Connor’s lawyers for further comment.