Former Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who challenged former President Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination final yr, urged in a brand new interview that Biden timed his most cancers prognosis announcement to deflect from renewed scrutiny of his time within the White Home.

“I don’t think it’s coincidental that this was announced this week,” Phillips instructed the New York Occasions in an interview printed Monday.

“It’s hard to comport otherwise,” he added.

The interview comes as new reporting from CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson in regards to the extent to which members of Biden’s internal circle took to defend the American public from indicators of Biden’s cognitive decline, towards the tip of his time period.

Phillips — who confronted intense blowback from Democrats when he voiced concern final yr about Biden’s age on the marketing campaign path — mentioned these efforts from Trump allies are, in some methods, worse than what he described as President Trump’s “corruption.”

“Donald Trump isn’t shy about his corruption,” Phillips instructed the Occasions within the interview. “What’s so troubling is that what the people around Joe Biden clearly were doing was in some ways more egregious.”

Biden’s private workplace introduced this weekend that the previous president was identified on Friday with an aggressive type of prostate most cancers. The announcement was met with a bipartisan outpouring of help, although some have raised questions on how the most cancers was not detected earlier.