Jake Tapper scrambled to respond when confronted directly over his new book — written with Axios reporter Alex Thompson — and the assertion that any “cover-up” of former President Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive and physical decline would only have been possible with the help of journalists.

Tapper and Thompson’s book, “Original Sin,” details Biden’s decline and his decision to run again despite that – and Tapper struggled to defend the fact that he, like many others in media, had failed to report on what was obvious to so many in Right-leaning media and to the American people.

Tapper was ultimately forced to admit that the conservative journalists — who’d been reporting on Biden’s obvious impairment for months, if not years — had been right all along.

“Alex and I are here to say the conservative media was right and conservative media was correct and that there should be a lot of soul-searching, not just among me, but among the legacy media to begin with, all of us, for how this was covered or not covered sufficiently 100 percent,” he said.

This Tapper quote goes out to everybody in conservative media who’s gotten a belligerent late night Tapper DM: “Alex and I are here to say the conservative media was right and conservative media was correct and that there should be a lot of soul-searching, not just among me, but… https://t.co/jZ1MJv2oXZ

— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) May 20, 2025

The admission came during an interview with Sirius XM host Megyn Kelly, who said Biden’s decline was “obvious” to the actually curious media.

“Over here in my ecosphere, we were covering all of these things,” Sirius XM host Megyn Kelly began. “It wasn’t just falling down, it was getting lost. It was some of the stuff you report in your book, we knew and we were reporting on. Like the multi jump-cuts in the videos of him, where it was obvious he couldn’t get through a one minute take.”

“It was clear to us that he was using a teleprompter, and there was some reporting on that at the time — all of which the White House was denying,” she continued. “Now, the current White House, I have some connections. With the Joe Biden White House, I had none — but you did. There was an attempted cover-up. It could only ever work if you allowed it, if the press allowed it. Some of us tried not to and some of us were complicit.”

Tapper pushed back then, saying that the Biden White House had not been terribly fond of him either — but Kelly argued that he’d gotten some 200 people in Biden’s orbit to talk to him for the book. Tapper noted that they spoke to him after the election, but Kelly said that he could have “called and worked” them before that.

“No, that’s the point, they were not being honest,” Tapper protested. “That’s the point.”

“Well, how did The Wall Street Journal get it in June of 2024?” Kelly asked. “And Jake Tapper and CNN couldn’t find sources for this story then, before he dropped out?”

Tapper noted that he’d had the reporters who broke the story for the WSJ — Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes — on his show to discuss their reporting after the debate he’d hosted alongside Dana Bash. However, he was forced to admit the fact that he didn’t have them on when the story broke – and had instead had them on after Biden’s disastrous debate performance.

Tapper claimed that he was “sure” he’d wanted to have them on when the story broke, but that he wasn’t aware of what the “booking situation” was at the time. Kelly noted that he’d instead booked a Democrat who spent the time smearing the WSJ report as propaganda from Rupert Murdoch.

“If we’re going to do this, let’s stick to the facts here, okay?” Tapper said.

“Jake, I’ve — that’s what I’ve been doing all along,” Kelly shot back. “One of us didn’t miss the story of the century when it comes to presidential politics, and one of us did.”

WATCH:

“One of us didn’t miss the biggest story of the century when it comes to presidential politics, and one of us did.”@MegynKelly and @JakeTapper debate Biden’s cognitive decline and the media’s role.

FULL interview out soon:https://t.co/YJPxz5Gu8dhttps://t.co/F96HgI7HIW pic.twitter.com/0GBVN29mZR

— The Megyn Kelly Show (@MegynKellyShow) May 20, 2025

Disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), who resigned amid twin scandals regarding his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, is now the subject of an investigation undertaken by the U.S. Justice Department.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the investigation had begun about one month earlier, and that it stemmed from his order mandating that nursing homes in the state of New York accept patients regardless of whether or not they’d tested positive for COVID-19.

The times cited two as-yet-unnamed “sources familiar with the matter” and said, “The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of Andrew M. Cuomo, a front-runner in the New York City mayoral race, after Republicans accused him of lying to Congress about decisions he made during the coronavirus pandemic as governor.”

A Justice Department spokesperson reportedly declined to comment on the situation, citing a policy against discussing ongoing investigations either to confirm or deny their existence.

Cuomo is currently leading the Democratic field going into the next New York City mayoral election, and his spokesman Rich Azzopardi claimed that the investigation was politically motivated.

“We have never been informed of any such matter, so why would someone leak it now? The answer is obvious: This is lawfare and election interference plain and simple — something President Trump and his top Department of Justice officials say they are against,” Azzopardi said, arguing that Cuomo had “testified truthfully to the best of his recollection about events from four years earlier, and he offered to address any follow-up questions from the subcommittee — but from the beginning this was all transparently political.”

The investigation was opened by the Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney’s Office when Ed Martin was still serving in the position on an interim basis. Jeanine Pirro has since been appointed to the role and her office will spearhead the investigation.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said after a hearing in June of 2024 that he had seen “overwhelming evidence” that Cuomo had been part of a 2020 audit that undercounted COVID nursing home deaths by 46%. He was referred to the Justice Department for what were termed “criminally false statements.”

The news comes just weeks after the Justice Department dropped a case against current Mayor Eric Adams — who is running for reelection as an independent — over concerns that it had been a political prosecution undertaken by the DOJ under former President Joe Biden.