U.S. House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., ratcheted up an investigation Thursday into the alleged cover up of President Joe Biden’s ongoing mental decline.
The media, president Biden and family and staff close to him as well as the president’s doctor have taken fire from those who say they colluded to cover up Biden’s mental decline, which eventually became impossible to ignore during a fateful debate last summer against now President Donald Trump.
Questions about the president’s mental decline were brushed aside by the mainstream media and top Democrats up until that point. They often insisted the president was “sharp” and on top of his game.
Comer pointed to a line from “Original Sin,” a new book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, that says “five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”
Another component of the story is Biden’s potential use of an autopen to sign documents instead of signing them by hand, though the use of autopen and to what degree it was used has not been confirmed.
“The cover-up of President Biden’s obvious mental decline is a historic scandal,” Comer said in the letters. “The American people deserve to know when this decline began, how far it progressed, and who was making critical decisions on his behalf. Key executive actions signed by autopen, such as sweeping pardons for the Biden Crime Family, must be examined considering President Biden’s diminished capacity.”
Now, Biden has announced a cancer diagnosis, raising questions about how long the president and his team knew about the cancer before announcing it.
Trump said this week he was “surprised the public wasn’t notified a long time ago” given how far Biden’s cancer has progressed.
Comer called for transcribed interviews with President Biden’s Physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor; former Director of the Domestic Policy Council Neera Tanden; former Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the First Lady Anthony Bernal; former Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini; and former Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Oval Office Operations Ashley Williams.
“In the last Congress, the Biden White House blocked these individuals from providing testimony to the Oversight Committee as part of the effort to cover-up Biden’s declining health,” Comer said. “Any continued obstruction will be met with swift and decisive action. The American people demand transparency and accountability now.”
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In one of the boldest art crimes in modern French history, a team of masked thieves struck the Louvre Museum in Paris early Sunday, stealing a collection of jewels once belonging to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. According to French media, the heist unfolded in just ten minutes — between 9:30 and 9:40 a.m. — as three men disguised as construction workers used a mechanical lift and power tools to access a second-floor balcony of the Apollon Gallery, home to some of France’s most treasured artifacts. Police say the burglars shattered a window, smashed glass display cases, and fled on two motor scooters through the heart of Paris as panicked tourists watched officers flood the museum courtyard. Investigators said the group made off with at least nine pieces, including a necklace, brooch, and tiara tied to Napoleon’s imperial court, though forensic teams are still confirming the exact inventory and value. One damaged crown — believed to have belonged to Napoleon’s wife, Empress Eugénie — was later found discarded near the gallery. The French Interior Ministry called the theft “an intolerable attack on our national heritage,” adding that while the jewels’ market value can be calculated, “their historical significance is beyond measure.”
And here are the first images from the Louvre heist — inside the Apollo Gallery, where it all took place.
A man dressed as a construction worker breaks open a display case.
Museum visitors walk by, unaware that a robbery is unfolding right beside them.
Authorities are investigating whether the mechanical lift used in the break-in was part of ongoing renovation work at the site, a potential inside assist that could explain how the thieves breached the museum so efficiently. “The suspects appeared to know exactly where they were going,” one investigator told ABC News, noting that the men wore construction vests and hoods to blend in with workers already on site. One suspect reportedly stood guard outside as the others executed the theft with surgical precision. No injuries were reported and no firearms were used, but the crime has rattled both the museum and the French government.
Jordan Bardella, president of France’s right-wing National Rally party, called the episode “a humiliation for our country” and “proof of the state’s decay.” Writing on X, he said, “The Louvre is a global symbol of our culture. This heist, which allowed thieves to steal the Crown Jewels of France, is an intolerable humiliation for our country. How far will the decay of the state go?” The Louvre — which houses masterpieces such as the “Mona Lisa” and the “Venus de Milo” — attracts nearly nine million visitors a year, making it the most visited museum in the world. Yet the theft comes amid growing turmoil inside the institution. Over the summer, staff staged a mass walkout over overcrowding, understaffing, and what unions called a “collapse in basic security.”
Police now fear the stolen artifacts could be melted down or dismantled to erase their trace, destroying centuries of French history in the process. “The risk is that some of the diamonds could be sold individually, which would make reconstituting the jewels nearly impossible,” a source close to the investigation told Le Parisien. As forensic teams comb through security footage and question contractors, France is once again confronting a painful reality — that even in the heart of Paris, its most sacred treasures are not immune to the growing sense of disorder plaguing the country.
Britain’s most consequential espionage scandal in a generation has narrowed on Keir Starmer’s inner cabinet after The Sunday Times revealed that alleged Chinese agent Christopher Berry was intercepted at Heathrow Airport with a “suitcase full of cash” — and that senior officials, including National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell and Cabinet Secretary Christopher Wormald, held a closed-door meeting, allegedly discussing that advancing the case would harm relations with Beijing, weeks before prosecutors abandoned the insider-threat file.
The revelations, combined with an explosive Opposition letter from Kemi Badenoch and a rare diplomatic intervention from Washington, have plunged Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government into the most serious national-security controversy of its tenure — one now shaking both Westminster and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. Not since the Kim Philby affair and the exposure of the Cambridge Spy Ring has a British government been so roiled by allegations of insider compromise and appeasement toward a hostile foreign state.
As The Sunday Times reported, Christopher Berry — a 33-year-old academic from Oxfordshire — was stopped under the Terrorism and Border Security Act after a February 2023 flight from China. Police seized £4,000 in cash, believed to have been supplied by his Chinese handler, codenamed “Alex,” linked to the Ministry of State Security.
A witness statement tabled in Parliament last week indicated that Berry funnelled real-time political intelligence through his MSS handler to one of Beijing’s senior leaders, all collected from a former Chinese teaching colleague — a Parliamentary researcher with deep access to senior Conservative MPs. Beijing reportedly viewed those MPs as a strategic threat, fearing that if they rose to higher office they would adopt a far stricter stance toward China’s geopolitical ambitions.
Though Berry was not detained at the time, the incident became central to the espionage case later dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service when the Starmer government declined to certify that China posed an “ongoing threat to national security” — a legal requirement under the Official Secrets Act.
The Sunday Times also revealed that Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins, the government’s sole witness, privately acknowledged that the decision not to describe China as an “ongoing threat” was “political.” The paper further disclosed that Jonathan Powell — a former banking executive who rose to become Starmer’s National Security Adviser — chaired a meeting on September 1 attended by Cabinet Secretary Christopher Wormald and MI5 Director-General Sir Ken McCallum, in which “the general theme of discussion was how the UK’s relationship with China was going to be damaged by this case.”
If accurate, that account directly contradicts Starmer’s assurance to Parliament that “no minister or special adviser was involved.” The implication — that Britain’s most senior national-security officials were weighing diplomatic consequences while an active espionage prosecution was still underway — has intensified accusations that the case was derailed by political interference rather than evidentiary weakness.
Within hours of the Sunday Times story, Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch posted a letter to X accusing Keir Starmer of misleading Parliament and concealing ministerial involvement in the case’s collapse.
Framing the letter, Badenoch sought to explain the rapidly evolving affair to a wider audience. “I don’t blame you if you’ve struggled to follow the China spying case engulfing Parliament. Even MPs are finding it hard to keep up with a story that seems to change by the hour,” she wrote. “I suspect many fair-minded people have assumed this story can’t contain much. It seems too implausible for the government to have deliberately let off people who were accused of spying on MPs. But the story is truly astonishing. The layers of it have unravelled over the past few weeks like something from a spy novel.”
In the letter itself, Badenoch demands full disclosure of all correspondence, meetings, and witness-statement revisions involving Jonathan Powell, the Attorney General, or the Cabinet Office. She references the Sunday Times account directly, noting that “Powell left attendees with the understanding that Deputy National Security Adviser Collins’s witness statement would operate within the language of the report,” implying foreknowledge and coordination between Downing Street and prosecutors. She further alleges that Starmer’s ministers “softened” later witness statements to downplay Chinese espionage, replacing hard intelligence assessments with diplomatic phrasing designed to reassure Beijing. Her conclusion is cutting: “You have shown Britain is weak in the face of espionage, and have emboldened our enemies to believe they can spy on us with impunity.”
As reported previously by The Bureau, the controversy has now drawn international concern. The Chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, John Moolenaar, has issued an extraordinary public rebuke on the court matter — a move almost without precedent between close allies. In a two-page letter dated October 16, 2025, addressed to James Roscoe, chargé d’affaires at the British Embassy in Washington, Moolenaar warned that Britain’s decision to abandon the prosecution risked setting “a dangerous precedent that foreign adversaries can target democratically elected legislators with impunity.” He wrote that the decision “deeply troubles” U.S. lawmakers and “undermines Five Eyes security coordination,” given the substantial amount of evidence against Berry and Christopher Cash, who were accused of funnelling parliamentary intelligence to the Chinese Communist Party.
“I hope the UK government will not allow this case to falter,” Moolenaar said, “and will instead take the steps necessary to ensure that both justice and due process are served.”
The letter, co-signed by senior members of the Committee and publicly released by Congress, marks an exceptional public intervention in a live national-security case involving a Five Eyes partner. Moolenaar added that the decision to drop the prosecution — despite evidence confirming a direct intelligence channel from Westminster to Beijing — “paints a concerning picture,” noting the resumption of high-level UK–China trade talks, negotiations over China’s proposed “super embassy” in London, and London’s ongoing review of its diplomatic posture toward Beijing. “Allowing this PRC aggression to go unchecked,” he warned, “would only incentivize the CCP to further interfere in Western democracies.”
As The Bureau previously detailed, Matthew Collins’s witness statement traced an intelligence pipeline connecting Westminster directly to Beijing’s leadership. Berry, via his handler “Alex,” transmitted reports obtained from Christopher Cash, a parliamentary aide with access to Conservative MPs critical of Beijing. Collins confirmed that some of the same intelligence later appeared in the possession of a senior CCP Politburo Standing Committee member — reportedly Cai Qi, one of Xi Jinping’s closest allies. Collins also documented Beijing’s targeted inquiries into the 2022 Conservative leadership race, focusing on Tom Tugendhat and Neil O’Brien, both members of the China Research Group (CRG) and long-standing critics of the CCP.
Taken together, the Heathrow cash seizure, the Powell-chaired meeting, the Badenoch letter, and the U.S. congressional intervention point to a modern Cold War crisis — a confrontation that has now moved beyond Westminster to test the cohesion of the Western alliance itself.
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