Biden adviser’s potential payday incentivized him to keep president in the White House and running for reelection, House report says
With lengthy pauses and befuddled looks reminiscent of his longtime boss, chief Biden campaign strategist Mike Donilon testified to House investigators that he stood to make $4 million in bonuses—on top of a similarly sized base salary—if then-president Joe Biden won reelection last year, according to video of his testimony released Tuesday.
It took Donilon, whom one newspaper has described as Biden’s “conscience, alter ego and shared brain,” more than two minutes to describe his lucrative pay arrangement with the Biden campaign, which started with a base salary “just a little bit short of $4 million,” and a $4 million bonus should Biden win reelection.
Asked in the July 31 interview whether his fee would “have changed depending on how far into the race President Biden made it,” Donilon stammered for 45 seconds before stating his fee was “a guarantee with the campaign.”
Donilon, a Biden aide since 1981, paused another 12 seconds when asked if he would receive a bonus depending on how the campaign went.
“How the campaign went?” asked Donilon. A House investigator restated the question: “Were there any circumstances in which you would have received a bonus?”
“Yes, there was,” Donilon replied after a five-second pause, adding the bonus was contingent “that Joe Biden would have been reelected president of the United States.”
“What would the bonus have been?” an investigator asked.
Six seconds later: “I believe it would have been $4 million.”
That pay structure created a massive incentive for Donilon to keep Biden in the White House and in the presidential race, in hopes he would win reelection in November, according to a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report released Tuesday.
Republicans have alleged Biden’s aides made most of the major decisions on the president’s behalf, in large part because of Biden’s cognitive decline and lack of energy.
“The Committee has found that these incentives, among others, motivated the inner circle to conceal the president’s decline while running the government in his stead,” the House report says.
Donilon, along with Biden aides Steve Ricchetti and White House doctor Kevin O’Connor, played the largest role in the coverup, according to the report, which bears the subtitle: “Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House.”
Donilon did that by withholding negative polling data from Biden that showed him underwater in the presidential race, Republicans allege.
“Donilon, while standing to gain millions by keeping Joe Biden in politics, held a tight grip on which polling data President Biden received and how to interpret such data,” the House report says.
Donilon told House investigators he believed Biden should remain in the presidential race, even amid growing calls for him to leave the ticket after a disastrous debate performance in June 2024 and a series of campaign stumbles.
Donilon denied his “financial stake” in the outcome of the race was a factor in his advice to Biden.
“I don’t believe it was a factor in my advice to the president,” said Donilon. “I believed in him, and so that’s my view.”
Biden ultimately dropped out of the race on July 21, paving the way for then-vice president Kamala Harris to lead the Democratic ticket.
Donilon left the campaign two weeks later, returning to work for Biden at the White House, Harris wrote in her memoir, 107 Days.
“I had my concerns,” Harris wrote. “Some, like Mike Donilon, one of Joe’s closest advisers, had moved from the West Wing to the campaign because he was an expert in channeling Joe; he knew Joe’s every whim and inflection.”
“It was unclear how that expertise could work for me,” wrote Harris. “In fact, [Donilon] left the campaign and returned to the West Wing less than two weeks later.”
