Late in the evening on June 27, 2024, an enfeebled Joe Biden shuffled through a crowded Atlanta Waffle House, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, shaking the hands of well-wishers who watched him debate Donald Trump.
Biden’s disastrous debate performance would lead to the abrupt end of his re-election campaign and start a cascade of recriminations that would call his administration and public legacy into question.
But at the time, his future – political or otherwise – was still uncertain.
As First Lady Jill Biden and the anemic octogenarian president walked to register to pick up a food order, reporters started barking out questions, catching the attention of the president and a short, middle-aged man, with close-cropped hair.
The man, wearing a beige suit, stepped forward – anxiety painted across his face. He caught the First Lady’s line of sight and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly, his pupils darting left and right. The look on Jill’s face can only be described as pained.
The man in the beige suit then pivoted, stepped back and came forward again – making eye contact with the president and gesturing toward the exit. Jill gave her husband a knowing glance, and the president was ushered out.
So who was this diminutive figure with the power to order the leader of the free world to zip and leave?
It was Anthony Bernal, 52, a special assistant to the president and Jill Biden’s chief of staff. And now that blink-and-you-missed-it moment in an Atlanta Waffle House has taken on new meaning as more is revealed about Biden’s physical and mental deterioration while in office – and many are demanding to know who was really in charge, if Biden was not.
As First Lady Jill Biden and the anemic octogenarian president walked to register (pictured above) to pick up a food order, reporters started barking out questions, catching the attention of the president and a short, middle-aged man, with close-cropped hair. (Anthony Bernal is pictured in beige suit in background)
It was Anthony Bernal (pictured above), 52, a special assistant to the president and Jill Biden’s chief of staff
Daily Mail spoke to multiple people in and outside of the Biden White House, who know Anthony Bernal, and while they seem to disagree about the temperament of the man, they agree on one thing: he sought and held enormous power.
‘He did have the most power inside the White House, the most access and power,’ a former aide to President Biden said exclusively.
A bombshell book about the allegedly coordinated effort to cover up Biden’s decline, published last month, excoriated Bernal, who is openly gay, depicting him as an ‘abrasive’ and bitchy Machiavelli who was desperate to keep the Biden family in office.
Two days after the book, Original Sin, was published, Bernal received a letter from James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, requesting he testify about ‘the role of former senior Biden White House officials in possibly usurping authority from former President Joe Biden and the ramifications of a White House staff intent on hiding his rapidly worsening mental and physical faculties.’
Then last week, 25-year-old DNC chair David Hogg was caught on camera telling an undercover reporter with Project Veritas: ‘Jill Biden’s chief of staff had an enormous amount of power.’ Deterrian Jones, a 26-year-old who worked in the White House office of digital strategy, added that Bernal was ‘scary’.
‘I would avoid him,’ said Jones. ‘He’s just like a shadowy, Wizard of Oz-type figure. The general public wouldn’t know how he looked. But he wielded an enormous amount of power. I can’t stress to you how much power he had in the White House.’
According to the White House insiders who spoke to Daily Mail, Bernal derived his influence through his close personal relationship with the First Lady.
‘He would still be the one holding the purse, riding next to her in a limo, picking out her dresses, like picking out the clothes, hiring and firing makeup artists and stylists, he was like a roving sort of catch-all,’ the Biden White House source said.
Bernal reportedly travelled nearly everywhere with the First Lady from the campaign trail, to the presidential retreat in Camp David, the Bidens’ homes in Delaware, and the classroom at the Northern Virginia Community College where Dr Jill taught until December 2024.
A bombshell book about the allegedly coordinated effort to cover up Biden’s decline, published last month, excoriated Bernal, who is openly gay, depicting him as an ‘abrasive’ and bitchy Machiavelli who was desperate to keep the Biden family in office.
The pair reportedly first bonded over champagne and french fries on election night 2008 when Joe became vice president and swiftly became inseparable. He was the only staff member who called her Jill, sources told the Original Sin authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, and kept her updated on gossip.
A confidante and advisor, he reportedly referred to himself as the Bidens’ marriage counsellor, and she in turn called him her ‘work husband’.
In Jill’s 2019 memoir, Bernal was singled out for praise: ‘A special thank-you to Anthony Bernal, who spent countless hours, holidays, and weekends to push me to write. He knows how much I love him and respect him.’
Bernal was indeed devoted to her, pushing to elevate her profile and glamour, and securing her Vogue covers in June 2021 and August 2024. Though, his role was far from superficial. Bernal, earning the maximum White House salary of $180,000 a year, became a shrewd sounding board and policy advisor to one of the most powerful First Ladies in history.
When Maria Shriver hosted a women’s health event in Boston in February 2024, staged to promote the Biden administration’s $100 million investment in women’s health, Shriver noted how she had been to the White House ‘to meet with Jill and Anthony Bernal.’
Then in August 2021, Thompson, then writing for Politico, published an exposé entitled: ‘Jill’s enforcer has a mean streak.’ Bernal was described as one of the most polarizing people in the White House who was ‘berating’ and ‘toxic’ and likened to the Meryl Streep character in The Devil Wears Prada.
One Biden staffer told Thompson that he had a constituency of one, adding: ‘The problem is that no one who has worked with him trusts him, and that’s not good for him or her.’
In March 2024, multiple sources told The New York Post that Bernal was a bully, who made staffers feel awkward with his sexual commentary.
‘It was a lot of inappropriate remarks — talking about other people’s attractiveness and speculating about their sex lives at very weird moments,’ one person said, adding that he had come to see ‘that’s actually sexual harassment.’
Another claimed Bernal ‘just sort of targets and goes in on certain people’ and would call them ’10 times in an hour’, creating a ‘pressure cooker’ environment.
A confidante and advisor, he reportedly referred to himself as the Bidens’ marriage counsellor, and Jill Biden in turn called him her ‘work husband’.
In March 2024, multiple sources told The New York Post that Bernal was a bully, who made staffers feel awkward with his sexual commentary.
‘There’s no way [Jill Biden] doesn’t know. It has been going on so long,’ the source said. ‘I don’t think she has a lot of advisers willing to give her a gut check. I think she thinks that Anthony’s like her bulldog protecting her.’
White House chief of staff Jeff Zients pushed back, saying ‘The president and first lady have full confidence in Anthony’s character, as do I. His many fans at the White House know him to be both gracious and tough, holding himself up to the highest standards, with a heart dedicated to public service. It is disappointing that he is the target of unfounded attacks from unnamed sources.’
Bernal also denied the claims, saying: ‘These unfounded attacks are not true.’
But one of the Daily Mail’s Biden White House sources corroborated that dark portrait of Bernal, claiming he was so obsessed with staying close to Jill that her ‘office was like a rudderless ship’ because he rarely did his job of managing staff.
‘People just wanted to stay out of his way so they didn’t have to deal with him,’ the Daily Mail was told.
Still, yet another colleague, who worked with Bernal at the White House for four years, told the Daily Mail that they were surprised at the attacks.
‘I honestly really enjoyed working with him,’ the person said. ‘He was intense, and has high standards. He’s extremely detail-orientated and demanding.’
‘I know there’s a lot of palace intrigue about him, and we clashed many times, but more often than not I’d walk away from those conversations and think: actually, you were right.’
Bernal, they said, was a caring and compassionate colleague – the first to call someone who had had a baby, and understanding when you needed time off to care for a sick relative.
He was sociable, read a lot, and enjoyed cooking and working out – although even that was part of the job. Bernal was known to join his boss at her SoulCycle classes.
His personal life remains a mystery: with no apparent significant other, he frequently attended state dinners alone, once accompanied by his sister Marisa; and once bringing Brian Mosteller, Obama’s former director of Oval Office operations, whose 2016 marriage to his husband was officiated by Joe Biden.
Bernal appeared to live a rather lonely peripatetic life, moving most years from one modern Washington DC apartment to another, usually in the young professional enclave of Shaw.
When the Bidens hunkered down in Wilmington during the pandemic, Bernal relocated to be with them.
‘He probably didn’t have much of a life outside work, but I think that’s fair to say for anyone in politics, right?’ the sympathetic White House source said. ‘When I worked at the White House, I felt like I didn’t have a life. You’re constantly on. It’s all consuming.’
Bernal grew up in Tucson, Arizona – the son of Yolanda, who worked in the school district, and John, a local government official who served Pima County as the deputy administrator for public works.
John and Yolanda had high hopes for their son, and sent him to the academically rigorous Gregory School, where annual fees today are more than $22,350.
He excelled, but not only in class. A 13-year-old Anthony scored a role in popular TV series Highway to Heaven, which told the story of a probationary angel, played by Bonanza star Michael Landon, who tries to help people to secure his own wings.
Biden’s disastrous debate performance would lead to the abrupt end of his re-election campaign and start a cascade of recriminations that would call his administration and public legacy into question.
So who was this diminutive figure with the power to order the leader of the free world to zip and leave? It was Anthony Bernal, 52.
By the late 1990s, he was at the University of Texas in El Paso, where he met Pablo Gonzales, a year ahead of him.
Bernal studied history and philosophy, Gonzales economics, but their paths crossed when Gonzales needed help as student president.
‘He was a brilliant force within the Greek organizations,’ said Gonzales. Bernal had been elected as the president of the interfraternity council, chosen to represent the frequently hard-drinking, macho groups despite being openly gay. Gonzales said their choice of Bernal as their leader spoke volumes about his talent.
‘He didn’t make a big deal of being gay, but we all knew. It wasn’t a secret. For him to represent the frats was significant.’
The two lost touch – Gonzales had vaguely heard that his friend ‘took on some governmental role,’ adding: ‘When you told me, it didn’t surprise me at all.’
Bernal has now reportedly taken a holiday on leaving the White House, but his work is far from over.
The Bidens made him director of Joe’s presidential library: Wilmington is hoping to be chosen, but a decision is yet to be made.
Bernal has to date ignored a request from Comer’s committee to testify in October 2023, but this time he may have no escape. They are asking him to appear before them by June 11.
On Monday, the Trump administration upped the ante even further: The Justice Department confirmed an investigation has been opened into whether Biden ‘was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him.’
But could it have been Bernal – a powerful adviser to a powerful First Lady – pulling the strings?
That’s now the questions everyone wants to answer.
