Many close associates and colleagues are now revealing that they knew the state of Biden’s brain almost from the beginning of his presidency.  We are told that the president seemed befuddled about what he had done, that he had forgotten he had signed bills, such as House speaker Mike Johnson reported after his meeting with Biden.  And most everyone saw the president wander into the jungle while on a trip.  Even as they report on the mistakes Biden made, they do not seem to understand the demented brain.

Those of us who have dealt with loved ones suffering from dementia know that you can’t take much of anything they say at face value.  They simply are not capable of knowing what they think.

The first thing most people lose as their dementia progresses is executive function.  They can’t take the evidence before them and make decisions; they can’t run committees or respond well to papers or arguments that are put before them.  That Biden, according to Ron Klain, thought he was president of NATO isn’t funny; it shows that he was in another world through most of his presidency.  Taking his comments and decisions seriously is ludicrous.

“Being of sound mind” is always on the will when one signs it.  There can be some levels to this; as one is fading, one can determine that it is time to get one’s documents in order.  But there is a line where the “being of sound mind” clause kicks in, and one can be declared non compos mentis.  Documents signed by someone with dementia can be contested.  There is room for mischief here.  Some states offer legal help and consultation to the elderly who feel they are being conned out of their money and property.  Indeed, that is a good and beneficial service.  There is, without doubt, a lot of fraud around those issues.

I have watched this process up close.  A relative of mine suffering from dementia had friends who urged him to find a lawyer at such a service to fight decisions the family was making to help him through his last days.  They were not quite aware of how bad his dementia had become and believed his reports that we were cheating him.  Suddenly, we were in danger of a suit that would only impoverish us all.

Fortunately, the lawyer had been down this path many times before.  After very careful work, he advised my relative that he had two options: Either stay with family, as we had hoped he would, or go to a memory care facility.  We were extremely grateful for the help we got, even if my relative was not.  A charlatan could have been ruinous.

The family made the decision to keep him at home for as long as possible and then take him to memory care.  We heard later from his colleagues at work, in the office where he had been a highly respected leader, that for a year they had not known how to get rid of him.  They could not ask him to retire because of his age; that was against the law.  To follow the law, they had to harass him by making him do tasks he could not do, hoping he would resign or be fired.  Meanwhile, he kept earning a six-figure income.

So the Biden family kept the secret while watching Joe’s dementia grow.  There were no lawyers or friends nearby who dared to address the issue.  The Biden family and his colleagues were hiding it from the world, for their own advantage, forcing the demented man to agree to their decisions and assent to the signing of documents that in a court of law could be successfully contested.  This is a crime we are talking about, not a joke.  And those who are guilty need to be held accountable.

Dayton Olesen is a pen name.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.