Trusted Biden aide testifies ex-prez skipped Super Bowl interview due to bombshell ‘classified records’ report: sources

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden opted to forgo a Super Bowl interview last year in part due to the release of the bombshell report from special counsel Robert Hur about his handling of classified information, a close aide testified Thursday, two sources familiar told The Post.

Anita Dunn, 67, former senior adviser to the president for communications, told the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that fears over Biden, 82, getting grilled over the then-pending Hur report loomed over his team’s decision.

“She told the committee President Biden’s team decided against doing a Super Bowl interview last year because they thought the main coverage would be about what he did with classified records and not about the president’s policy decisions,” a source close to Dunn told The Post.

“She testified they decided this before the Hur report had come out.”

A second source familiar with Dunn’s transcribed interview said she testified that “Biden’s team decided against doing a Super Bowl interview due to information contained in the Hur report.”

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The Hur report, released on Feb. 5, 2024, concluded that “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

That conclusion kicked up a firestorm about Biden’s fitness and mental acuity.

The Super Bowl LVIII took place on Feb. 11. Hur noted that Biden’s counsel was given time to review the report on Feb. 3 and 4, before its release. Multiple outlets reported on Feb. 3 that Biden was sitting out the Super Bowl interview, after having done so in 2023 as well.

Biden’s decision not to sit for a Super Bowl interview raised eyebrows as it was a missed opportunity for him to get his message out to a massive audience of potential voters during an election season.

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During her roughly five-hour interview with the Oversight panel, Dunn recalled how the former president’s team decided against him taking a cognitive test.

“Ms. Dunn revealed that President Biden’s inner circle came to a consensus he should not take a cognitive test, concluding it would offer no political benefit,” the source explained.

Still, Dunn, who has been in Biden’s orbit since the 1980s, insisted that he was the ultimate decision-maker.

“President Biden also was appropriately accessible to the press,” Dunn testified, per her opening statement obtained by The Post. “Biden had more of these interactions with reporters than almost any other president over a four-year term, going back to Ronald Reagan.”

“I did not observe White House staff making key decisions or exercising the powers of the presidency without President Biden’s knowledge or consent.”

She pointed to data from Towson University scholar Martha Joynt Kumar concluding that Biden held 37 press conferences, participated in 151 interviews and 679 informal gaggles with reporters over the course of his presidency.

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At one point, she revealed that she was “unaware” of Biden’s stutter “until it was reported by the media in 2020” and “went on to blame the media for pushing the narrative that President Biden was old,” according to the source.

Dunn is the 10th ex-Biden aide to appear before the powerful investigatory panel. No lawmakers were present for her transcribed interview, which was conducted by attorneys for the committee.

She avoided questions from the press both before and after her testimony.

Bruce Reed, Biden’s former deputy chief of staff for policy, blamed the 46th president’s infamous debate performance on his stutter during his testimony before the panel on Tuesday.

Dunn did two stints in the Biden White House from 2021 through August of last year. She had departed the administration briefly in 2021 before returning the following year. Prior to that, she served as the director of communications in the Obama administration.

She had cultivated close ties to the octogenarian president and was described by some as a tertiary member of Biden’s so-called “Politburo,” his tight-knit group of confidants who were described as the “ultimate decision-makers.”

The GOP-led Oversight panel didn’t subpoena Dunn for testimony, so she was unable to plead the Fifth Amendment like other Biden aides had done to avoid questioning.

Dunn’s appearance before the Oversight Committee comes in response to Chairman James Comer’s (R-Ky.) revival of his probe into whether there was a “cover-up” of Biden’s fitness for office that he had opened during the previous Congress.

That probe has since been expanded to assess the 46th president’s use of autopen to sign off on official documents.

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Biden has strenuously rejected GOP aspersions of his use of autopen, insisting that he was behind every decision.

Other ex-Biden aides who sat before the Oversight panel include former White House chief of staff Ron Klain; former senior adviser Mike Donilon; former counselor Steve Ricchetti; Jill Biden’s powerful former chief of staff Anthony Bernal; former presidential physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor; Ashley Williams, former special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office operations; Neera Tanden, the former White House director of the Domestic Policy Council; and Bruce Reed, former deputy chief of staff for policy.

The Oversight Committee has at least four more interviews scheduled, including with former special adviser Ian Sams, former senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates, former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and former chief of staff Jeff Zients.

Sams is the next ex-aide scheduled to testify on Aug. 21.