A sailor assigned to a medical team at a base in Virginia tried unsuccessfully to access President Joe Biden’s medical records multiple times this year, a Navy spokesperson said Tuesday.
The sailor, whom defense officials did not name, worked with the Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command at Fort Belvoir when the failed attempts took place in February.
The service member searched for “Joseph Biden” in the Military Health System’s electronic health record “out of curiosity,” Cmdr. Tim Hawkins said in a statement.
A health record that was not the president’s was accessed, Hawkins said, adding that “at no time was the President’s personal information compromised.”
The attempted access was first reported by ABC News.
A defense official told NBC News that the sailor made three attempts to access Biden’s information on Feb. 23 — roughly two weeks after special counsel Robert Hur cited Biden’s “poor memory” as one of the reasons he decided not to bring charges in his classified documents review.
A co-worker reported the records breach, which the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigated. NCIS notified the Secret Service, which participated in an interview of the unidentified sailor, the defense official said.
The NCIS probe concluded April 24, and the sailor “was held accountable administratively,” the defense official said.
Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for the Defense Department, said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was notified of the breach in February and that the Navy had informed the White House about the incident.
Disclosure of the attempted records access comes amid new questions about Biden’s health after his dismal debate performance against former President Donald Trump last month. Biden’s personal physician said in a letter released Monday night — addressing visits to the White House by a Parkinson’s disease expert — that Biden showed no signs of any neurological disorder, including Parkinson’s, during his last annual physical on Feb. 28.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
