The House GOP’s much ballyhooed investigation into former President Joe Biden’s alleged cognitive decline has largely ended with a thud.

In a new report released Tuesday morning, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Republican majority claims to have found evidence that senior Biden White House aides “exercised the authority of the former president” and concealed signs of Biden’s mental deterioration. In fact, the probe concluded with the need for answers to more questions than any appearance of a smoking gun.

Between June and September, House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) convened depositions or transcribed interviews with more than a dozen former Biden aides, including chiefs of staff Ron Klain and Jeff Zients. The Trump administration waived executive privilege for witnesses as part of an effort to clear the way for their cooperation. Even so, several of them invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

The House Oversight GOP is citing, in part, this barrier to getting information from the witnesses as proof of an internal cover-up around Biden’s health. The committee chair is now asking President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice to look into each and every one of Biden’s executive actions, with Comer arguing the state of Biden’s mental faculties could not be accounted for at the time of signing.

“[B]arring documentation establishing a record of President Biden’s decision-making, the Committee deems void President Biden’s executive actions that were signed using the autopen,” Comer wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “[A]nd the Committee determines that action by the Department of Justice is warranted to address the legal consequences of that determination.”

The request could prolong the administration’s crusade against some of Trump’s biggest political rivals, though the efforts to overturn Biden’s executive actions could be blocked by the courts. Presidents also have for years relied on the autopen to sign materials as a standard practice, and Biden has maintained that his decisions were his own.

The Republican report recommends that the District of Columbia Board of Medicine investigate whether Biden’s White House doctor, Kevin O’Connor, failed his duties as a physician by misleading Americans as to the president’s health. As evidence, the report pointed to O’Connor’s refusal to cooperate with the committee’s probe: O’Connor cited his Fifth Amendment rights and physician-patient privilege in declining to answer questions. Republicans also cited O’Connor’s decision to forgo a cognitive exam for the president.

Finally, Comer is asking DOJ to investigate O’Connor as well as two senior aides — Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini — who also cited the Fifth Amendment to ascertain whether their conduct in the former administration was criminal.

“Dr. O’Connor’s lack of transparency demonstrated while serving as the active White House physician and not testifying before this Committee to answer relevant, pointed questions about President Biden’s ability to carry out the duties of the presidency is untenable for a licensed medical professional tasked to diagnose, heal, and protect the official in the highest elected office,” Comer wrote in a letter to the D.C. Board of Medicine’s chair.

The letter added that, if necessary, O’Connor should be sanctioned by the Board of Medicine.

Comer’s leadership of the probe into Biden’s mental decline comes at a fortuitous time in his own political career: The Kentucky Republican is weighing a bid for the state’s governorship in 2027 — a race where Trump’s endorsement could carry considerable weight.

He previously co-led an impeachment inquiry into Biden that culminated in a hundreds-of-pages long report that concluded his family “engaged in a global influence peddling racket from which they made millions of dollars.” And although the report argued Biden’s actions constituted “impeachable conduct,” House GOP leadership never set up an impeachment vote on the House floor.

Biden’s weak performance in the June 2024 presidential debate set off a cascade of questions over his mental acuity, ultimately forcing him out of the presidential race. But even after he dropped his reelection campaign and largely stepped aside from public life, Republicans continued to press the party’s leadership for covering up Biden’s potential health failings.

Comer took on the charge of putting together a review of the former president’s use of the autopen. Trump, separately, launched the administration’s own probe into whether Biden’s former White House aides contributed to a cover-up of his decline and authorized illicit use of the autopen.

“With the exception of the RIGGED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020, THE AUTOPEN IS THE BIGGEST POLITICAL SCANDAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social this summer.

The Justice Department and representatives for Biden, O’Connor, Bernal and Tomasini did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Among the highlights of Comer’s report is that Zients told the committee that Biden had been informed of his suggestion that he should consider dropping out of the presidential race and Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, thought Biden should drop out after the June debate.

Additionally, Zients disclosed that Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, took part in some White House discussions around pardons. Biden would go on to pardon the younger Biden, who was facing his own legal struggles.

Democrats grappled Monday with the first major fraying of their coalition amid the government shutdown, with a federal employee union calling for them to stand down four weeks into the standoff.

There was no immediate surrender from party leaders, but the union’s plea forced many Democratic lawmakers into a defensive crouch. Their No. 2 Senate leader said it would be a subject of internal conversations this week with bipartisan talks all but ground to a halt.

“It has a lot of impact. They’ve been our friends,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters Monday, adding that Democrats “take them seriously.”

The push by the American Federation of Government Employees for Congress to immediately pass a “clean” stopgap funding bill, which is what has been offered by Republicans, is among a laundry list of pressure points that are bearing down on lawmakers.

By the end of the week, members of the military will miss their next paycheck, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits will run out and Americans who get their health insurance through Affordable Care Act exchanges will confront premium spikes as open enrollment starts without a deal on how to extend soon-to-expire subsidies. The ramifications of the shutdown on air travel also escalated over the weekend.

Sen. Mark Warner of federal-worker-heavy Virginia has been firmly in favor of confronting President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans over the expiring ACA subsidies and health care. But the Democrat struck a more cautious note Monday.

“Look, I think we can still deal with health care and SNAP, but I know … the shutdown is a real challenge,” he said. “Federal employees feel like they’ve been abused and also going for weeks now without pay.”

He sidestepped a question on whether the AFGE’s statement would change his position: “Let’s see.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met Monday evening with his leadership circle, including Durbin. The entire Senate Democratic caucus will meet for a closed-door lunch Tuesday.

Schumer didn’t directly address the union’s new position during a floor speech Monday. Spokespeople for Schumer also did not respond to a request for comment on the group’s statement, in which national president Everett Kelley said, “It’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today.”

Instead, Schumer noted the cascading consequences of the shutdown and laid the responsibility for ending it on Trump and Republicans, saying that the president “skipped town for his second foreign trip in a month.”

“The president should stop focusing on foreign escapades, on ballrooms, on bailouts for Argentina, and start focusing on negotiating with Democrats,” Schumer said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters in Chicago that Democrats aren’t budging.

“We want to find a bipartisan agreement that reopens the government immediately,” he said. “We’re going to continue to stand by hardworking federal employees, and our position has not changed over the last several weeks.”

But among the rank-and-file, there are growing signs of bipartisan frustration about the stalemate, with few signs of movement in the Capitol for weeks.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in a floor speech Monday called for the Senate to abandon its typical four-day workweek and gavel in Friday, joking with reporters afterward that she went “rogue.”

“I don’t think we should be going home and just behaving as if this was another week in the United States Senate — not when we have a government shutdown,” Murkowski said. “There is so much, so much that is coming at us like a freight train.”

Murkowski, who has an independent streak, pointed to the looming SNAP deadline and ACA open enrollment as a “pivot point” for Congress. She spent time speaking with several colleagues on the Senate floor Monday, including Democratic Sens. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, as well as GOP Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama.

“I thought it was really constructive,” she said about the conversations, adding that lawmakers need to get to a point where “we’re not going to leave the room until we work this out.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson pointed to the looming deadlines Monday and said the onus is on Democrats to relent. Johnson cited the union’s statement during a news conference, saying he hoped it impacted Democrats’ thinking.

“They understand the reality of this,” he said.

But Republicans are facing a tactical divide of their own as they debate whether to hold standalone votes on the Senate floor this week that would ease particular pain points such as the SNAP lapse and paychecks for active-duty troops.

Senate GOP leaders won’t make a final decision until a closed-door lunch Tuesday as they hear out different factions within their conference. But they are wary of easing up on Democrats just as they show signs of fraying and are seen as unlikely to allow votes on the so-called “rifle-shot” bills.

Durbin, for instance, predicted Monday that bills from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would pay air traffic controllers and TSA agents and from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that would keep food aid flowing would likely pass with Democratic support.

What was also clear Monday is that Democrats continue to feel comfortable laying the blame for the shutdown at Trump’s feet — especially as he spends the week in Asia.

That colored responses from many Democrats, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who said in a statement that “Trump should spend less time traveling around the world and more time negotiating an end to his shutdown.”

Van Hollen is in talks with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to try to find an agreement on legislation that would pay federal employees and active-duty military troops. Democrats are also proposing limiting Trump’s ability to fire federal employees for the duration of the shutdown.

“We’ve been engaged over the weekend and now,” Van Hollen said Monday.

Another Democrat from a fed-heavy state, Virginia’s Tim Kaine, also invoked Trump Monday in brushing off the union’s new stance.

“The AFGE would not want us to cut a deal and then have Trump fire a bunch of people next week. If we cut a deal and then he did that, they would come to us and say, ‘What the hell were you guys thinking?’” Kaine told reporters.

Shia Kapos contributed to this report.

Dozens of Democratic attorneys general and governors are planning to sue President Donald Trump’s administration Tuesday over its decision to not tap emergency funds amid the government shutdown to keep food aid flowing to 42 million Americans next month, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the matter ahead of a public announcement.

Trump officials concluded in a Friday memo that they cannot legally tap a $5 billion contingency fund for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program amid the shutdown to pay benefits in November. Some in the administration believe, with $9 billion needed to fund SNAP payments for the month, there is no time to distribute smaller payments to individual states.

Administration officials anticipated their legal determination would be challenged in court, POLITICO reported last week, and there are no serious efforts underway at USDA to find other sources of funding, according to two other people granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations. But some GOP lawmakers whose constituents would be clobbered by a first-ever lapse of federal food benefits, are pushing for some kind of patch to prevent that from happening.

Senate Republicans are divided over whether to vote on a standalone bill to keep SNAP beneficiaries — many of whom live in rural and Hispanic-majority Republican districts — from losing assistance. Many argue Democrats will be at fault if the Friday deadline barrels past with no fix as they continue to push Democratic senators to vote for the stopgap spending bill the House passed last month.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune argued Monday the best way to fund SNAP was for Democrats to vote to reopen the government, though he said GOP senators would discuss the issue during their Tuesday policy lunch.

Republicans, for now, don’t believe Thune will put a SNAP funding carve-out to a vote this week, according to two senators and three aides granted anonymity to discuss GOP party strategy.

But a growing number of Senate Republicans — including some within Thune’s own leadership circle — are publicly saying Congress needs to fund SNAP whether or not Democrats relent on overall government funding, lest millions without food aid before Thanksgiving.

“Yeah, I would vote for that,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said in a brief interview Monday about supporting a standalone SNAP bill.

Capito, who chairs the Senate GOP policy committee and whose constituents are heavily reliant on SNAP, said she didn’t want the program to lapse during the shutdown.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins and a handful of other Republican senators have signed on to a bill from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to fund the program, and they are pushing for a vote this week.

Asked Monday if she wants the administration to allow SNAP to be administered in November, Collins replied, “I certainly do.”

Collins said she wrote to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last week and “strongly recommended that she use the $5 billion in contingency fees.” She said she hadn’t heard back from the secretary.

Republican and Democratic aides believe a SNAP carve-out would pass in the Senate, but bringing it up for a vote this week would require all 100 senators to agree to fast-track it to the floor.

Privately, Republicans fear allowing a standalone vote on food aid would relieve key pressure on Democrats and potentially prolong the shutdown. Passing it would also mean bringing the House back into session to send it to Trump’s desk, something Speaker Mike Johnson has been trying to avoid.

“If we could figure out a way to find something Democrats will vote for, we’d love to do that, but right now, we could fully fund the SNAP program by reopening the government,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said. “We could do that in 30 minutes from now.”

Asked if he would support a standalone SNAP bill, Mullin replied, “I would support opening the government back up.”

Calen Razor and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.