The White House and the Biden campaign ‘unequivocally’ denied a report claiming a handful of President Biden’s longtime aides are working on a plan to convince the president to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. 

‘Unequivocally, this is not true. President Biden’s team is strongly behind him,’ White House spokesman Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital. 

The New York Times reported Thursday afternoon that a handful of aides and advisers that have long worked with Biden are convinced he will need to bow out of the 2024 race as concerns mount surrounding his health and age, and are working on a plan to convince him to drop out. 

‘A small group of Mr. Biden’s advisers in the administration and the campaign – at least two of whom have told allies that they do not believe he should keep trying to run for a second term – have said they would have to convince the president of several things,’ the report states. 

The report added that the Biden insiders have to convince him to drop out as he ‘remains convinced of the strength of his campaign.’

The Biden campaign also denied the report in a comment to Fox Digital. 

‘Patently false. This team stands with the president,’ campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo told Fox News Digital. 

The New York Times report follows other media outlets claiming other Biden insiders are saying they don’t see a path forward for Biden following his botched debate performance against former President Trump late last month. 

NBC News, for example, reported Thursday: ‘Several of President Joe Biden’s closest allies, including three people who are directly involved in efforts to re-elect him, told NBC News they now see his chances of winning as zero – and the likelihood of him taking down fellow Democratic candidates growing.’

The New York Times also ran a story Thursday claiming the Biden campaign is testing the viability of Vice President Kamala Harris running in place of Biden. 

‘As President Biden faces mounting pressure over the future of his candidacy, his campaign is quietly testing the strength of Vice President Kamala Harris against former President Donald J. Trump in a survey of voters, according to three people informed about the effort,’ the New York Times reported. 

Concerns surrounding Biden’s health and mental fitness are at a fever pitch this summer, as some Democrats call on him to quit the presidential race following his disastrous debate against Trump last month. Biden has bucked calls to drop out, vowing to remain in the race as his campaign and the White House ramp up his number of public events in an apparent effort to quell concerns the president isn’t up for another four-year term in the Oval Office. 

Biden is expected to hold a news conference on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. after hosting NATO leaders in Washington, D.C., this week. The press conference is highly-anticipated, with lawmakers sounding off that the presser will serve as an ‘ultimate test.’ 

‘Just as all of his public appearances go on, it will be very interesting to see him do what they themselves have called a big boy press conference. Look, it’s been the biggest political cover up, probably in the history of the country,’ House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., previously told Fox News Digital when asked about the press conference. ‘I think the more public appearances and speeches he does, the more that will put that on vivid display. And I think there’s a lot to answer.’

The media have dubbed the press conference a ‘big boy press conference,’ with the president fielding questions from the media solo. It marks Biden’s first solo press conference of the year and the first time he will speak to the media at a presser since the debate on June 27, Fox News found.

Since Biden’s disastrous debate performance, Democrats and the media have repeatedly said that if Biden remains in the race, he needs to hold more interviews and press conferences.

‘The only way for him and the campaign to respond is not by talking to senators or governors, because this is not a tell-me situation. It’s a show-me situation,’ Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., told CNN last Wednesday. ‘So he’d have to be out and about in the hurly-burly of a campaign, open-ended press conferences with folks like you, engagements with voters that are unscripted.’

Biden did sit down for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopolos that aired on July 5, but the interview did little to quell mounting concerns over the president’s mental acuity and age, most notably when Biden repeatedly dodged whether he would take a cognitive test.

‘Have you had the specific cognitive tests, and have you had a neurologist, a specialist, do an examination?’ Stephanopoulos asked.

‘No, no one said I had to.… They said I’m good,’ Biden responded.

Stephanopoulos pressed Biden a third time on taking a cognitive or neurological test and whether he would release the results of such a test to the public. The president, however, brushed off the question again. 

‘Look, I have a cognitive test every single day,’ Biden said. ‘Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Sounds like hyperbole, but we are the central nation in the world.’

Biden did deliver a strong NATO speech on Tuesday, but praise from fellow Democrats was few and far between. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview the following day that Democrats are keeping their thoughts on Biden quiet ‘until we see how we go this week.’

‘Let’s just hold off,’ she said on MSNBC. ‘Whatever you’re thinking, either tell somebody privately, but you don’t have to put that out on the table until we see how we go this week.’

For years, the White House has brushed off repeated requests from the media to hear directly from President Biden’s White House physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor. This posture continues even with a mounting number of traditional Democratic allies calling on the president to bow out of the 2024 race over serious concerns over his mental acuity and age. 

Concerns surrounding Biden’s health and mental fitness are at a fever pitch this summer, as Democrats call on him to quit the presidential race following his disastrous debate against former President Trump last month. Biden has bucked calls to drop out, vowing to remain in the race as his campaign and White House ramp up his number of public events in an apparent effort to quell concerns the president isn’t up for another four-year term in the Oval Office. 

Biden’s demeanor during the debate – which included him losing his train of thought, stumbling over his words, and delivering responses with a raspy voice and subdued tenor – was just the most recent example of concerning behavior from the president, following repeated gaffes and miscues during public events since 2021. As concerns mount surrounding Biden’s health, the media has called on the administration to make the president’s White House physician available for questions. 

‘Given the fact that it’s more than a bad night when his political future is threatened, would he be willing to provide more medical information? Would he be willing to have Dr. O’Connor provide more to answer these questions?’ a reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre last week. 

‘What we have provided has been very transparent,’ Jean-Pierre responded. 

This week, as Jean-Pierre discussed a Parkinson’s disease expert’s repeated visits to the White House in the last year, another reporter asked: ‘So can [Dr. O’Connor] tell us?’

Jean-Pierre shot down that specific request, arguing O’Connor ‘will not confirm’ details surrounding the Parkinson’s expert’s visit. O’Connor released a letter that same day clearing up and confirming that the Parkinson’s expert visited the White House as part of the president’s annual physical, and that other trips to the White House were unrelated to Biden’s health. There were no signs of neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, ascending lateral sclerosis, stroke or cervical myelopathy, found during Biden’s physical in February, O’Connor said. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House about any plans to host O’Connor during a press conference, and why he has not yet joined the media to discuss ongoing concerns on Biden’s health. The White House brushed off a potential O’Connor press conference, saying the physician’s public and detailed reports on the president’s health since 2021 are sufficient. 

‘The thorough summaries Dr. O’Connor puts online for the public are far more extensive than the presidential medical documentation released during the previous administration,’ White House spokesman Andrew Bates said. ‘In fact, the American people heard from Dr. O’Connor through his daily written reports on President Biden’s COVID case for over two weeks straight – a condition he had the honesty to disclose right away, unlike Trump’s physicians in office. 

‘Dr. O’Connor teaches at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Science, completed U.S. Army flight surgeon training, and was among the first American service members in Afghanistan and Iraq. His unique expertise is sought across the medical community, in which he is respected for his candor, attention to detail, and work ethic,’ he continued.   

O’Connor has released repeated statements and updates on the president’s health since Biden was sworn in as the president, including when he was diagnosed with COVID, as well as updates on Biden’s annual physicals. 

Fox News Digital reviewed previous White House press briefings from across the Biden administration and found reporters have repeatedly asked to hear directly from the president’s doctor, going back to at least 2022, when Biden was diagnosed with COVID.

‘I understand there’s been questions about Dr. O’Connor, but does the White House plan on making him available for questions, making him available to the public at any point?’ a reporter asked Jean-Pierre on July 22, 2022. 

‘We feel that Dr. O’Connor’s statements and his detailed report – again, on a – on a – on a situation as the – as the doctor just said, is mild – very mild.  And he’s able to continue to do his work – is enough,’ she responded. 

Earlier this year, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents after his departure as vice president under the Obama administration further compounded concern over the president’s mental acuity. 

Hur announced in February that he would not recommend criminal charges against the president for possessing classified materials, calling Biden ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

‘Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,’ Hur wrote in his report. 

The findings sparked widespread outrage that Biden was effectively deemed too cognitively impaired to be charged with a crime yet could still serve as president.

Again, the media asked the White House to hear from the president’s doctor following the report’s findings. 

‘When can we talk to the president’s doctor? And how come he hasn’t been – they haven’t been asked to come out here and talk with us, given the Hur report that challenges the president’s mental fitness?’ another reporter asked Jean-Pierre on Feb. 12 of this year. 

‘So, look, you know, just to speak to the Hur report really, really quickly. Special Counsel Hur is – as far as I remember, is a – is a – obviously, a R- – a Republican, a – a prosecutor.  He’s not a – he’s not a medical doctor. He’s just not. It’s not for him to speak to. It’s just not,’ Jean-Pierre responded. 

She was pressed again that day: ‘But can we talk to his doctor, then?’

‘Well, look, I have said the pres- – the medical doctor, the president’s doctor is going to do a physical. He’s going to – and he has always put forth, in the last two years, a detailed – detailed memo on the president’s – on the president’s, obviously, medical physical,’ she said. 

‘And so, I’m just going to leave it there. I don’t have anything else to add.’

O’Connor was first appointed to the White House Medical Unit in 2006 for what was intended to be a three-year military assignment, according to his profile published by the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, from which he graduated in 1992. Instead, Biden requested O’Connor stay on as his physician in 2009, ultimately serving as his doctor when Biden was vice president, before serving as Biden’s doctor again when he was sworn in as president. 

O’Connor has a cozy relationship with the Biden family, Fox Digital previously reported, with the president’s sister-in-law describing him as a ‘friend’ in 2018, media reports showing he allegedly had a business relationship with Biden’s younger brother Jim Biden, and the president repeatedly mentioning him in his 2017 memoir ‘Promise Me, Dad,’ most notably in relation to Beau Biden’s brain cancer diagnosis. 

‘‘Seriously, Doc. No matter what happens. Take care of Pop. For real. Promise me. For real,’’ Beau Biden said to O’Connor before his death, according to the president’s memoir. 

The media’s request to hear directly from the president’s doctor isn’t unprecedented, as both of former President Trump’s White House physicians, Dr. Sean Conley and Texas Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson, delivered press conferences. Conley spoke to the media when Trump was diagnosed with COVID in 2020, while Jackson addressed the media in 2018 to tout the then-president’s ‘good genes’ and how he passed a cognitive test. 

When asked about the Trump doctors speaking to the media and not Biden’s doctor, the White House told Fox News Digital that the media hearing from a White House physician is ‘unusual.’ 

‘Historically, it is unusual for White House physicians to come to the Briefing Room unless a major medical event occurs. We do not look to an abusive, discredited, ultra-partisan or a doctor who concealed Trump’s COVID case from the nation as role models,’ Bates told Fox Digital. 

Following Biden’s disastrous debate, the president has engaged in a media, public event and campaign blitz, including hosting NATO leaders in Washington, D.C., this week, when the president delivered a strong speech commemorating NATO’s 75th anniversary. Praise from Democrats for the speech, however, was few and far between, with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying in an interview the following day that Democrats are keeping their thoughts on Biden quiet ‘until we see how we go this week.’

Biden is slated to hold a highly-anticipated press conference at 6:30 pm Thursday, dubbed his ‘big boy press conference’ by the media, where he will take questions solo from the press. 

President Biden is gearing up for a crucial press conference Thursday evening, the first solo press event since the APEC Summit in California eight months ago.

On Nov. 15, Biden met with China’s President Xi Jinping and reportedly left the meeting optimistic that he had reduced tensions between U.S. and Chinese forces in the Asia-Pacific, a feat he was aiming to button up prior to announcing his re-election bid. The president’s press conference for the summit lasted about 20 minutes, and he answered roughly five questions before leaving.

However, throughout Biden’s 41 months as president, he has gone a total of 30 months without a solo news conference, 16 months without a TV news interview, and 10 months without either, according to a Fox News count.

And several of those press conferences have reportedly been scripted, with the president receiving the questions ahead of time. Biden has also had other interviews guided by questions that were allegedly pre-selected by media executives, which left no room for prominent journalists to ask him off-the-cuff questions or even follow-ups to the ‘scripted’ questions. 

‘To the word. Every single question was scripted, gone over dozens of times by many editors and executives. Absolutely. I was on script and was told not to deviate,’ former ESPN host Sage Steele previously told Fox News Digital about an interview she had with Biden in 2021.

What the media are calling Biden’s ‘big boy press conference’ Thursday evening is setting up high expectations for his Democratic base. It comes as at least nine elected Democrat lawmakers have called on Biden to drop out of the race and 23 Democrats, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have hinted that his doing so could be in the best interests of defeating Donald Trump in November.

Thursday’s press conference is Biden’s first interaction with reporters since debating Trump in June and his subsequent sit-down with ABC host George Stephanopoulos, amid rising concerns about his health and mental acuity. Biden, 81, has not agreed to do an official independent cognitive test, instead saying that he takes one ‘every day’ while fulfilling his presidential duties. 

Biden’s interview with Stephanopoulos was also highly anticipated, as the campaign has been filling the president’s schedule to the brim with appearances and rallies in an attempt to showcase he is still fit to continue for another four years. The campaign has also tapped surrogates such as liberal California Gov. Gavin Newsom to headline Biden-Harris campaign events to encourage more support amid a firestorm of unfavorable media coverage of the president’s performance.

Biden has also repeatedly dismissed calls for him to drop out of the race to allow another Democratic candidate to take on former President Trump in November.

‘There’s been a lot of speculation: What’s Joe going to do? Is he going to stay in the race? Is he going to drop out? What’s he going to do?’ Biden said Friday in a speech in Madison, Wisconsin. ‘Well, here’s my answer: I am running and going to win again.’

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday that they ‘can expect a solo press conference from this president at the end of … the NATO summit. He’s looking forward to it. And he will be taking your questions. So, that’ll be a good thing.’

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton and Gabriel Hays contributed to this report. 

Does the president of the United States have the power to throw you in prison?

That is the test, says Michael Cohen, of the petition submitted to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. 

‘The Constitution is the bedrock of our democratic republic and is what makes America the beacon of the world,’ Cohen says.

‘To have a President weaponize the DOJ…is how autocracies are created.’

Cohen, former President Trump’s controversial long-time lawyer and fixer, is asking the court to hear his claim that he was sent back behind bars, shackled and placed in solitary confinement on the alleged orders of Trump and Justice Department officials in July 2020 in retaliation for his writing his first tell-all book, ‘Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump.’

‘Presidents are not kings,’ says the petition. ‘This case represents the principle that presidents and their subordinates can lock away critics of the executive without consequence. That cannot be the law in the country the Founders thought they created when they threw off the yoke of the monarch.’

In 2020, U.S. Federal Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein found that the Trump administration violated Cohen’s First Amendment rights when it sent him back behind bars after he was released to home confinement.

‘The purpose of transferring Mr. Cohen from furlough and home confinement to jail is retaliatory,’ the judge said during a hearing on Cohen’s reimprisonment.

‘It’s retaliatory because of his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book and to discuss anything about the book or anything else he wants on social media and with others.’

A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons denied that Cohen was retaliated against, calling the allegation ‘patently false.’

However, Cohen’s lawyer says the case goes far beyond the impact on his client, but on the legal protections for all American citizens against any constitutional violations by the executive branch.

‘This case presents an important and unprecedented question – what remedy will this country provide a citizen who was incarcerated because of their criticism of government officials. No one, especially not the President, can use the prison system to silence their critics,’ says Cohen’s attorney, Jon-Michael Dougherty.

‘As it stands now, there is no consequence for officials who lock away their critics. That cannot be America. It must not be America. There is a clear and present danger to Americans’ rights. If speech can lead to a prison cell, many will choose to be silent.’

Two courts ruled against Cohen’s initial claim, based on a narrow reading of a Supreme Court ruling called ‘Bivens,’ which provides citizens the limited legal right to sue federal officials who violate their constitutional rights.

The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the law does not seem to provide damages and cites the fact that Cohen was ultimately released from prison to home confinement was his legal relief. However, Cohen’s petition points out that the courts have not ruled on remedies or methods needed to prevent such violations in the future and is asking the Supreme Court to decide just that. 

‘This case happens to involve Michael Cohen and Donald Trump, but it is not about Michael Cohen and Donald Trump. This case is not about politics. It is about freedom,’ Dougherty told Fox News.

However, Trump lawyer Alina Habba, who successfully argued two of the previous cases, says Cohen will not get anywhere with this latest effort.

‘Michael Cohen’s suit against the President was doomed from its very inception. Setting aside the fact that his allegations are meritless, the Supreme Court has already held, as recently as 2022, that Bivens suits in this context are not viable,’ Habba told Fox News.

During his current campaign, former President Trump suggested he could prosecute his political opponents, establish ‘televised military tribunals,’ and has named a variety of officials and prosecutors who have brought cases against him who should be ‘put in jail.’ 

‘I would have every right to go after them,’ the former President told Fox News last month, but added he would not actually do that.

Cohen claims that Trump would, in fact, seek revenge, despite Trump’s and the government’s previous denials.

‘Be warned…Donald will do it again and again if given the chance!’

Cohen’s petition echoes that prediction.

‘A former President and his subordinates conspired to use the federal prison system to silence one of the President’s most vociferous and prominent public critics by revoking his approved release from prison to home confinement when the critic did not agree to waive his rights to speech,’ it says.

‘The possibility that the federal government has the power to retaliate against critics with imprisonment, without any consequence for or check against the officials engaged in such retaliation, is a chilling prospect. This Court should not turn its eyes away from this profound breach of the contract between a government of limited power and free citizenry.’

Dougherty says the petition is in front of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. In order for Cohen’s petition to be considered by the full court, four of the nine justices must agree to hear it during the court’s next term in the fall.

Habba believes that the court will likely decline to hear Cohen’s plea, and if it does, will find that the Justices’ recent ruling on establishing immunity for ‘official acts’ of a president will apply to Cohen’s case. 

‘In the unlikely event that the Supreme Court chooses to entertain Mr. Cohen’s petition, and in the even more unlikely scenario that it finds any merit to his Bivens claim, his suit still fails under the doctrine of presidential immunity. If this case proceeds forward, I look forward to a decisive victory,’ she told Fox News.

In response to the petition, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in part that ‘Michael Cohen is a disgruntled disgrace and a total loser.’

‘Nothing Mr. Cohen says can be trusted and now that his 15 minutes of fame have expired, he is more desperate than ever.’

Cohen was the star witness in the recent trial in Manhattan that convicted Trump of 34 felonies.

Cohen says, ‘No President should ever be permitted to weaponized the Department of Justice through a willing and complicit attorney general to have a citizen unconstitutionally remanded to prison (solitary confinement) because they refused to waive their first amendment rights. It’s a case ripe for SCOTUS.’

Dougherty says the Court has a duty to accept the case because of the unique and compelling Constitutional arguments it presents.

‘The Supreme Court has said that the kind of lawsuit Mr. Cohen has brought can be entertained in only ‘the most unusual circumstances.’ What could be more unusual than a claim, supported by the findings of a federal judge, that the President and his subordinates locked away a critic for refusing to be silent? This is that case.’

Former President Trump took shots at actor George Clooney on his Truth Social platform over the last several hours, including a video with President Biden’s face superimposed onto a scene from one of Clooney’s movies.

‘So although I wish I were here with better news, the fact is you and I are sitting here today because this will be your last week of employment,’ Clooney’s character in ‘Up in the Air’ says in the clip posted by Trump. Footage of Biden looking into the camera during a recent interview with ABC’s George Stephanopolous was featured in the clip. 

‘This is not an assesment of your productivity,’ Clooney continues. ‘Try not to take this personal.’

‘Well, I just had a bad night,’ Biden responds.

The video mocking Biden came shortly after Trump blasted Clooney on Truth Social following the actor’s call for Biden to drop out of the race weeks after a Hollywood fundraiser he attended with Biden.

‘So now fake movie actor George Clooney, who never came close to making a great movie, is getting into the act,’ Trump wrote in the post. ‘He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are. What does Clooney know about anything?’

‘Clooney should get out of politics and go back to television,’ Trump continued. ‘Movies never really worked for him!!!’

Clooney wrote in his New York Times article that Democratic Party leaders needed to stop trying to convince Americans they ‘didn’t see what we just saw,’ and accused them of ignoring ‘warning signs’ concerning Biden.

Former Obama adviser Jon Favreau, a member of the group often referred to as the ‘Obama bros’ during his tenure in the White House, was also at the Hollywood fundraiser and followed up Clooney’s announcement with a similar sentiment.

‘It was not surprising to any of us who were at the fundraiser,’ Favreau told CNN. ‘I was there. Clooney was exactly right, and every single person I talked to at the fundraiser thought the same thing, except for the people working for Joe Biden, or at least they didn’t say that.’

Biden has said he will not be leaving the 2024 race, and his campaign is continuing to go ‘full steam ahead,’ as one source put it to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Biden campaign and Clooney’s representatives for comment but did not receive a response.

Fox News Digital’s Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report