As questions swirl around former President Joe Biden’s capability to serve in office during his only term, intensified by his recent prostate cancer diagnosis, those around Biden have been more deeply scrutinized.
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book, Original Sin, details how Biden’s aides considered former first lady Jill Biden one of the most influential first ladies in history; as a result, her top aide, Anthony Bernal, was also considered highly influential in the administration.
Bernal is a longtime Democratic aide who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations before serving as the former first lady’s senior adviser from 2020 to 2025. He also served as one of Joe Biden’s deputy campaign managers and was present when the former president gave up the race in July 2024.
He and fellow aide Annie Tomasini reportedly shifted the power dynamic of Biden’s “politburo,” or the group of advisers who steered him. Tapper and Thompson’s book described them as “intensely loyal” with an “older-brother-and-little-sister vibe.”
“The significance of Bernal and Tomasini is the degree to which their rise in the Biden White House signaled the success of people whose allegiance was to the Biden family — not to the presidency, not to the American people, not to the country, but to the Biden theology,” the authors wrote.
Bernal, in particular, had a fierce reputation.
A Project Veritas video showed Democratic National Committee Vice Chairman David Hogg telling the outlet in a secretly recorded conversation that Bernal had an “enormous amount of power.”
Former White House Office of Digital Strategy aide Deterrian Jones added that his power was an “open secret” and described him as “scary.”
Original Sin’s authors said Bernal used his power to cast out “potential heretics.” Some of the Biden administration aides described him as the “worst person they had ever met,” using loyalty to weed out defectors:
“He considered loyalty to be the defining virtue and would wield that word to elevate some and oust others — at times fairly and at times not. ‘Are you a Biden person?’ he would ask West Wing aides. ‘Is so-and-so a Biden person?’”
Bernal worked with Jill Biden to keep score of “who was with them and against them.” The book said the pair were determined to push Joe Biden through his disastrous debate performance to November, though their efforts ultimately failed.
A former White House staffer blasted Tapper and Thompson’s characterization of Bernal and the Biden administration in a comment to Fox News. “A lot of vignettes in this book are either false, exaggerated, or purposefully omit viewpoints that don’t fit the narrative they want to push. Anthony was a strong leader with high standards and a mentor to many. He’s the type of person you want on a team — he’s incredibly strategic, effective, and cares deeply about the people he manages,” they said.
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Bernal could make his way back to the public spotlight in person soon.
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) demanded that Bernal and Tomasini, among others, sit for interviews in an investigation into Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline. “The cover-up of President Biden’s obvious mental decline is a historic scandal. The American people deserve to know when this decline began, how far it progressed, and who was making critical decisions on his behalf,” Comer said in a statement. “Today, we are calling on President Biden’s physician and former White House advisors to participate in transcribed interviews so we can begin to uncover the truth.”