Vicious accusations are flying among three former White House doctors, as President Joe Biden’s personal physician is set to be hauled in front of Congress.
On Tuesday, ex-Trump White House doctor turned Republican congressman Ronny Jackson told the Daily Mail that former Biden doctor, Dr Kevin O’Connor, engaged in shockingly bizarre and sexually inappropriate behavior in the White House.
‘He made sexually inappropriate comments in front of women in the office,’ claimed Jackson, a retired US Navy Rear Admiral who oversaw care for Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Jackson’s accusations date back to the Obama administration, when Biden was serving as vice president.
At the time, Jackson was director of the White House Medical Unit (WHMU) and was responsible for overseeing O’Connor, who also worked for the unit. The WHMU is part of the White House military office and staffed by military doctors who care for the president, vice president and their families.
Additionally, Jackson alleged that O’Connor ‘would ask people, people that he had just met, for their cell phone. They would give him their cell phone. He would stick it in his pants, in his crotch, and then give it back to them.’
‘[O’Connor] thought that was just hilarious,’ said Jackson. ‘Most people thought it was weird and inappropriate and immature, but he thought it was funny.’
The Daily Mail reached out to O’Connor via his lawyers, as well as the offices of former Presidents Biden and Obama, for comment and has not yet received a response.
However, another former White House physician, Dr Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served as President Obama’s doctor during the time the incidents are claimed to have occurred and oversaw both Jackson and O’Connor, told the Daily Mail that he never heard such allegations.
‘I am adamantly telling you: I left in July 2013 and I wasn’t aware of that, no one mentioned that,’ he said.
Kuhlman suggested that Jackson’s claim may be motivated by personal animus and claimed that the two men were rivals.
‘I knew they didn’t get along,’ he added, ‘I had Kevin [O’Connor] covering [Vice President Biden], and Ronny [Jackson] helping me covering the Obama family.’
Jackson himself has faced allegations of misconduct.
A 2021 inspector general’s report from the Pentagon described how he made sexual comments to subordinates and drank alcohol during his time at the White House Medical Unit. Jackson has denied the allegations, but the Navy demoted him from Admiral to Captain in July 2022, citing the IG’s findings.
And, according to Kuhlman, Jackson suspects that O’Connor was behind that report.
‘I would point out the obvious: the inspector general of the Navy did a report into Ronny Jackson. Jackson’s opinion is that Kevin O’Connor was the source of that,’ he said.
Those accusations, too, were not witnessed by Kuhlman.
‘For the record, from 2006-13 no one ever told me Ronny Jackson was behaving inappropriately. So I wasn’t protecting anyone. He and Kevin were both ambitious people, sometimes you get blinded by ambition,’ said Kuhlman.
Now, the spotlight turns to O’Connor who has been subpoenaed by the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee to testify later this month about an alleged White House cover-up of President Biden’s health in office.
Questions about Biden’s cognitive state have been raised after the publication of the new book ‘Original Sin,’ and last month the ex-president announced that he had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.
O’Connor reportedly never subjected Biden to a formal cognitive battery during his presidential physicals. And while he would release a letter describing his findings on Biden’s health, he never answered questions from the media on the matter.
His findings on Biden’s health declared him ‘fit’ to be president.
Four months before the disastrous presidential debate between Trump and Biden – which resulted in Biden stepping down as the Democratic presidential nominee, O’Connor signed off on Biden’s health, writing he ‘continues to be fit for duty.’
Dr Kuhlman, himself, has questioned O’Connor’s treatment of Biden, saying the president should have been subjected to extensive annual neurocognitive exams and that the results should be made public.
‘My position is that a 78-year-old candidate, Trump at the time, an 82-year-old president [Biden], would both benefit from neurocognitive testing,’ Kuhlman told The Washington Post, noting how age-related decline is inevitable.
‘Any politician over the age of 70 has normal age-related cognitive decline.’
Jackson alleged to the Daily Mail that O’Connor was very close to the Biden family and protected by them.
‘He was treated as a son by Joe and Jill Biden,’ Jackson told the Daily Mail. Jackson claims that’s why he didn’t report O’Connor for inappropriate conduct.
‘He got away with it because of the people that he’s surrounded with in the Biden inner circle, who were also cut from that same cloth,’ he said.
‘I had actually considered several times relieving him of his duty and getting rid of him at the White House because of some of the inappropriate things he had said and done. But I knew that if I did that, it would be very short-lived, because he was essentially part of the Biden family,’ he said.
That justification, though, doesn’t fly with Kuhlman.
‘If it happened on [Jackson’s] watch, his responsibility was to talk to the WH military office, deputy chief of staff. It’s kind of repulsive that he would bring this up 10 years later,’ he said.
O’Connor is a retired U.S. Army colonel and began service as a physician in the White House in 2006 under the Bush administration. In 2009, O’Connor was named physician to then-Vice President Biden. He retired from the military in 2017 and was named Biden’s physician when Biden became president.