Joe Biden — at the time of the events recounted, U.S. Vice President in the first Barack Obama administration — attended John Kerry’s December 2009 Christmas party in Georgetown. John Kiriakou was present, having just begun service as senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.[1][2]
The Angelo Sans recognition
Biden’s demeanor at the event — “exactly the opposite of Kerry” — included a feat of recall that Kiriakou specifically notes. “I said, ‘Mr. Vice President, we’ve met a number of times. You probably don’t remember me. I’m from Newcastle, Pennsylvania, and my dad was best friends with Angelo Sans.’ He goes, ‘Angelo Sans from seventh grade?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you’re best friend from seventh grade.’ He says, ‘I do remember you. We talked about Angelo’s a taxi driver in Las Vegas now.’ I said, ‘That’s right. He is a taxi driver. Great memory.’ I said, ‘That conversation was 15 years ago.’"[2][3]
"I remember you. I don’t like you.”
Biden then turned to the staffer next to Kiriakou and said “I remember you. I don’t like you,” glanced at Kerry, and walked away. Kiriakou’s question to the staffer was answered: “Biden has hated me since I told him in a memo that we should pull out of Afghanistan.”[3][4] Kiriakou recounts a similar episode at a separate Kerry Christmas party, where then-Vice President Biden went person to person greeting guests and, on reaching Kiriakou’s Afghanistan-focused colleague, said “I see you’re still slithering around” — a dig the colleague accepted, replying that he was, and proud of it, a sign Biden still held a grudge over the colleague’s advocacy for withdrawal from Afghanistan.[5]
2020 campaign incidents
Kiriakou has separately discussed three incidents from Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign that he cites as early signs of cognitive decline: Biden’s dentures falling out mid-debate, requiring him to catch them and put them back in; a burst blood vessel that turned the white of his eye red during a debate appearance in Iowa ahead of the caucuses; and a speech in Iowa, the week before the caucuses, where bright stage lighting reportedly left him confused about the crowd’s location, leading him to deliver the entire speech with his back to the audience. Kiriakou calls it “the most high-profile case of elder abuse… that probably the world has ever seen.”[6]