White House transparency under spotlight over Biden’s medical record

While Joe Biden is facing scrutiny over his competence to take on Donald Trump and serve a second term, scrutiny is also falling on the White House and his aides’ transparency when it comes to his medical records.

Since the president’s debate disaster last month, reporters and White House staff have thrashed it out in numerous heated press conferences about the 81-year-old’s mental fitness.

On several occasions over the fortnight since the debate, the Oval Office has been forced to clear up discrepancies in comments, statements or facts put out only hours or days earlier.

On Tuesday, the White House admitted that an expert on Parkinson’s disease did meet with Biden back in January – just hours after insisting that the specialist’s visit was not related to the president.

During a White House press briefing earlier this week, reporters had pushed press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about visitor logs showing that top neurologist Dr Kevin Cannard had visited the official residence eight times from last summer through to this spring.

In one meeting, on January 17, the movement disorder specialist and fellow at Emory University had met with Dr Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s personal physician.

White House visitor logs show it was the sole meeting between the doctors.

Jean-Pierre initially denied that the meeting was related to care for the 81-year-old president – saying “I can say that it was not” before later backtracking and confirming it was after all.

In a statement on Tuesday, the White House confirmed that Biden underwent a neurological exam with Dr Cannard on January 17.

The exam was part of the president’s annual physical, the results of which were released the following month. The physical found “no findings which would