Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a 2026 candidate for California governor, criticized former Vice President Kamala Harris and former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra on Tuesday as complicit in covering up former President Biden’s cognitive decline while in office.
Villaraigosa said those actions, in part, led to President Trump winning the November election. Becerra, who previously served as California‘s attorney general, is also in the running for governor, and Harris is considering jumping into the race. All three are Democrats.
“At the highest levels of our government, those in power were intentionally complicit or told outright lies in a systematic cover up to keep Joe Biden’s mental decline from the public,” Villaraigosa said in a statement. “Now, we have come to learn this cover up includes two prominent California politicians who served as California Attorney General — one who is running for Governor and another who is thinking about running for Governor. Voters deserve to know the truth, what did Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra know, when did they know it, and most importantly, why didn’t either of them speak out?”
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, from left, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez, Nathan Ellgren, Susan Walsh / Associated Press)
Villaraigosa based his remarks on excerpts from “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson and publicly released Tuesday.
The book, largely relying on anonymous sources, argues that Biden’s confidants and inner circle kept his deteriorating state from the American people, resulting in the Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election.
The book portrays Biden as in decline for as long as a decade, and argues that a circle of political advisors and his family hid his condition from voters.
“Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra took an oath of office and were entrusted to protect the American people, but instead Kamala Harris repeatedly said there was nothing wrong with Biden and Becerra turned a blind eye,” Villaraigosa said.
“Original Sin” was published shortly after the former president disclosed on Sunday that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.
One example of Biden’s cognitive decline cited by the authors was that he confused Becerra with homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, according to the New York Times.
Asked to respond to Villaraigosa’s attack, Becerra did not address this incident but expressed well wishes for the former president and his family as Biden begins treatment. He also defended his dealings with the former president when he was the nation’s health chief.
“I met with President Biden when needed to make important decisions and to execute with my team at HHS,” Becerra said in a statement. “It’s clear the President was getting older, but he made the mission clear: run the largest health agency in the world, expand care to millions more Americans than ever before, negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs, and pull us out of a world-wide pandemic. And we delivered.”
Attempts to reach a representative for Harris were unsuccessful Tuesday afternoon.
