WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Joe Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor is well known around the White House. The burly former Army surgeon is always near his favorite patient, ready to treat or consult when needed, though few outside the building know who he is.
But Biden’s politically crippling performance in the debate changed all that. Subsequent and uncomfortable questions about the 81-year-old Democratic president’s mental and physical ability to serve a second four-year term have thrust O’Connor into the spotlight.
In February, just four months before the disastrous debate, O’Connor oversaw Biden’s most recent medical examination and wrote in a public memo that the president “remains fit for duty and is fully performing all of his duties without exceptions or concessions.” The White House said on Tuesday that the doctor’s assessment stands.
But some Republican lawmakers now want the man Biden simply calls “Doc” to come to Capitol Hill to answer their questions about the president’s health and medical care. There are also questions about why he did not push his patient – the president – to undergo cognitive testing.
And when White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused on Monday, citing privacy concerns, to explain why a neurologist specializing in Parkinson’s disease had visited the elaborate eight times between July 2023 and last March, it was O’Connor who later stepped in to clarify the matter.
Late Monday, he released a letter explaining that the doctor, Kevin Cannard, was a neurologist who had examined Biden during each of the three physicals he has undergone since taking office in 2021. O’Connor said Cannard also treats other people in the White House, which explains his occasional presence there.
O’Connor and Biden have had a close relationship for over a decade.
After more than two decades in the Army, O’Connor joined the White House Medical Unit at the invitation of then-President George W. Bush. He planned to end his three-year tour of duty with a six-month tour of duty under recent Vice President Biden after the Obama administration began in 2009.
“That didn’t work out, and I ended up spending the whole eight years with him,” O’Connor joked last year in an interview with the New York Institute of Technology’s College of Osteopathic Medicine about his role as chief medical officer to the president.
He retired after Obama and Biden left office but remained Biden’s personal physician. Biden brought O’Connor back to the White House when he became president in 2021.
“I retired and had a plan, and here I am again,” said O’Connor, who grew up in New Jersey.
The doctor was a central figure and mouthpiece for the Biden family when Beau, the then-vice president’s eldest son, was dying of brain cancer. According to “Promise Me Dad,” Biden’s memoir about that period of his life, O’Connor advised Beau Biden on the best course of treatment and gave him a sober assessment of his prognosis. O’Connor was also in the operating room to tranquil Beau Biden as he underwent a craniotomy, Biden wrote. Beau Biden died in May 2015.
Affable and powerfully built, O’Connor, 58, married with three daughters, is a cheerful presence in Biden’s inner circle, often mixing medical advice with jokes. He regularly travels with Biden, which is standard for all presidents, and is often seen carrying ponderous medical bags and riding in the surrogate limousine in the president’s motorcade.
White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said O’Connor, an osteopath, was someone whose “unique expertise is sought after throughout the medical community and is respected for his candor, attention to detail and work ethic.”
Although he is largely operating in the background, some Republicans in the House of Representatives want to employ the political back and forth surrounding Biden’s performance in the debate to portray the doctor in a stronger lightweight.
Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent O’Connor a letter asking him to appear before the committee for a transcribed interview to discuss his medical assessment of the president.
“Americans are questioning President Biden’s ability to lead the country, and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the circumstances surrounding your assessment in February of this year that ‘President Biden is a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old man who remains fit to successfully perform the duties of the President…'” Comer wrote.
Comer also demanded that O’Conner turn over documents related to his alleged ties to Biden family businesses. Comer claims O’Conner previously worked closely with James Biden, the president’s brother, at a company that ran rural hospitals, and says that connection clouded his medical judgment about Biden’s cognitive condition.
White House spokesman Ian Sams wrote on social media on Tuesday that Comer’s demand was “absolutely ridiculous and offensive.”
Before joining the White House Medical Unit under the Bush administration, O’Connor was chief surgeon for the Army’s Delta Force, the secret special forces unit that later killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. His tours included tours with the 82nd Airborne Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment, and he was among the first soldiers to enter Iraq and Afghanistan during U.S. military operations.
Biden wrote in his memoirs that O’Connor took part in “heavy combat operations” in anti-terrorist operations following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
In a speech to the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians, O’Connor credited his training in osteopathic manipulation with getting him a job in Delta Force after treating several surgeons and with moving to the White House after a colleague recruited him to treat Bush.
He teaches part-time at George Washington University School of Medicine.
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AP White House correspondent Zeke Miller, Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
