The governor of Kentucky said he was getting phone calls suggesting Republican Senator Mitch McConnell was dead before his proof of life photo was published last week.

Andy Beshear, the state’s Democrat governor, said that multiple ‘agencies’ called him prior to the photo telling him that McConnell was dead.

McConnell, 84, shared a photo of himself holding a newspaper amid intense speculation over his health. He claimed a fall had left him ‘briefly unconscious,’ ending weeks of silence from his office about his hospitalization and absence from Capitol Hill. 

But Beshear is calling for greater transparency and urging him to be honest with constituents about his ability to serve.

‘It had been a month before anything had been put out, not even an official statement from Senator McConnell,’ Beshear said of the proof of life image in an interview with Katie Couric. 

‘In fact, I’d gotten two calls from different agencies – not state agencies – suggesting he’s passed.

He said that while McConnell is entitled to ‘a level of privacy’ about his health, he needs to be forthright with those he works for. 

‘When you’ve been in a hospital for a month, and you’ve missed all the votes, which is your job, you owe your boss, like anybody else out there who works, an explanation of what’s been going on and when you’ll get back,’ Beshear said Thursday.

Mitch McConnell sits up in a hospital bed beside his wife, former transportation secretary Elaine Chao, holding the front of Sunday’s Washington Post sports section

Andy Beshear, the state’s Democrat governor, said that multiple ‘agencies’ called him prior to the photo telling him that McConnell was dead

‘When you take on these jobs, when you represent the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, you give up some of that. That’s what comes with the territory.’ 

The Daily Mail has reached out to a spokesperson for Senator McConnell for comment. 

The image showed McConnell sat up in a hospital bed beside his wife, former transportation secretary Elaine Chao, with the front of Sunday’s Washington Post sports section.

The photo sparked rampant speculation online with thousands of posts scrutinizing the image, including claims that the Sunday paper in McConnell’s hand is doctored.

The Washington Post published an analysis last night which found that the metadata on the photo – the digital footprint coded into the image – shows that it was indeed taken on Sunday. 

An independent digital forensics expert also said that there is no evidence that the image is fake.

Viral posts amplifying claims the McConnell photo was doctored showed a zoomed-in picture of the paper in his hand which showed garbled text in the sports section. 

But others cautioned that AI had been used to zoom in on the photo, and in trying to ‘upscale’ the image, the technology had simply generated random text.

The Washington Post published an analysis last night which found that the metadata on McConnell’s proof of life photo – the digital footprint coded into the image – shows that it was indeed taken on Sunday

The above photo posted online shows garbled text in the sports section of the paper, suggesting that it was doctored. However, others cautioned that AI has been used to zoom in on the photo, and in attempting to ‘upscale’ the image it simply generates random text

A column in the Sunday sports page of the Washington Post, left, and the paper seen in McConnell’s Trump hand, right, which users pointed out appears to be consistent

Other zoomed-in pictures of the paper show that its layout appears consistent with Sunday’s paper. 

McConnell was admitted to a hospital on the morning of June 14 following a medical emergency at his Washington, DC, home.

Paramedics responded to a report of an unconscious person believed to have suffered a ‘cardiac arrest,’ with a medic reporting ‘CPR in progress’ at the address.

The senator was not named on the call, and his office has instead claimed that he had a mild case of pneumonia and had not suffered a stroke or a heart attack.

McConnell said his doctors have told him he cannot return to the Senate floor yet, though he said he is still working with his staff on Kentucky business.

McConnell’s statement landed less than 24 hours after the sudden death of Senator Lindsey Graham, 71, and days after Beshear publicly pressed for information on his condition. 

Republican leaders are now short of votes on a floor where the margin was already thin, with Graham gone and McConnell absent. 

No timeline has been given for the Kentucky senator’s return to Capitol Hill. 

Speculation over McConnell’s health intensified after Trump loyalist Laura Loomer claimed an unnamed White House source told her he is ‘brain dead’ and ‘not coming back’ to work.