Former US commerce secretary and Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo hasn’t said much publicly about the 2024 presidential election, but her name just landed in the US House Oversight Committee’s investigative report on former president Joe Biden’s cognitive condition while in the White House.
The 100-page report, titled “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House,” is deeply partisan in its conclusions – suggesting that pardons and other executive actions taken by Biden should be voided – but it is based on interviews with several of Biden’s top aides.
That’s where Raimondo comes into play.
While she was not interviewed by the committee, former Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients identified Raimondo as one of the cabinet secretaries who expressed concern about Biden’s ability to win reelection following his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump in June 2024.
In the same interview, Zients acknowledged that within a few days after the debate, Biden “was aware of my view that I thought it was prudent to consider getting out of the race.”
Zients wasn’t asked to expand on Raimondo’s concerns, but this marks the first time she has been publicly identified as a cabinet member who was worried about Biden’s reelection. Most of the high-profile books about the 2024 campaign haven’t mentioned Raimondo.
The Oversight Committee did interview another Rhode Islander and top aide to Biden during its investigation: Mike Donilon.
As he has said multiple times since the election, Donilon told the committee that he believed there was an “overreaction” to Biden’s poor debate performance.
Donilon also confirmed that he was paid just a little bit short of $4 million by the Biden campaign, and was in line for a $4 million bonus if Biden had been reelected.
This story first appeared in Rhode Map, our free newsletter about Rhode Island that also contains information about local events, links to interesting stories, and more. If you’d like to receive it via email Monday through Friday, you can sign up here.
Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.
