President Donald Trump launched an investigation on Wednesday into whether former President Joe Biden was actually functioning as the president or his staff was simply using an autopen to run the country, potentially without Biden’s knowledge.
Trump signed a memorandum directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to start an investigation into individuals, like Biden’s aides and staff, who may have engaged in a conspiracy to hide Biden’s mental decline from the public and take it upon themselves to exercise the power of the presidency.
“It has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority,” the memo states. “This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history. The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”
“For years, President Biden suffered from serious cognitive decline. The Department of Justice, for example, concluded that, despite clear evidence that Biden had broken the law, he should not stand trial owing to his incompetent mental state,” the memo continues. “Biden’s cognitive issues and apparent mental decline during his Presidency were even ‘worse’ in private, and those closest to him ‘tried to hide it’ from the public. To do so, Biden’s advisors during his years in office severely restricted his news conferences and media appearances, and they scripted his conversations with lawmakers, government officials, and donors, all to cover up his inability to discharge his duties.”
The memo itself is a damning indictment of Biden’s presidency, stating that the “vast majority” of executive actions from the Biden administration “were signed using a mechanical signature pen,” or autopen. The Biden White House issued 1,200 presidential documents and oversaw the appointments of 235 federal judges (including one Supreme Court justice).
Biden also signed the most pardons and commutations of any president in history, including the pardon of his own son, Hunter. He issued preemptive pardons for his brothers James and Frank and his sister Valerie, along with his siblings’ respective spouses, as well as for corrupt people like Mark Milley, Liz Cheney, and Anthony Fauci.
“Just 2 days before Christmas in 2024, the White House announced that Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 most vile and monstrous criminals on Federal death row, including several child killers and mass murderers,” Trump’s memo states.
Bondi and all other agencies that become relevant over the course of the investigation are tasked with uncovering “(i) any activity, coordinated or otherwise, to purposefully shield the public from information regarding Biden’s mental and physical health; (ii) any agreements between Biden’s aides to cooperatively and falsely deem recorded videos of the President’s cognitive inability as fake; (iii) any agreements between Biden’s aides to require false, public statements elevating the President’s capabilities; and (iv) the purpose of these activities, including to assert the authorities of the President.”
While the memo does not say specifically what uncovering the information will do, finding that these actions were coordinated by staff — potentially without Biden’s knowledge or, given his mental issues, understanding — and fulfilled through a political machine instead of the president could result in an attempt to nullify many of Biden’s actions.
Executive actions like memos and orders can be reversed easily, but more pressing, potentially, will be the challenging of the legitimacy of Biden’s appointments to courts and other positions, as well as the acts of clemency.
According to pool reports from the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said that whoever used the autopen was the actual president, and that he thought “the biggest scandal of the past many years is the Autopen.”
On Thursday, Biden responded to the investigation, stating, “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
“This is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations,” he added.
However, evidence of his decline and the cover-up by his staff has been known for quite some time. Even Democrats’ allies in the corporate media have started talking about it, most notably CNN’s Jake Tapper, who wrote a book on the subject after having been an active participant in the cover-up for years.
Despite the two-faced nature of Tapper, his book does reveal that Biden’s staff and other Democrats knew of Biden’s incapacity but justified their cover-up and unelected, oligarchical rule behind an empty president by telling themselves that Trump was more of a “threat to democracy” than their own political coup.
“Although the authority to take these executive actions, along with many others, is constitutionally committed to the President, there are serious doubts as to the decision making process and even the degree of Biden’s awareness of these actions being taken in his name,” Trump’s memo states. “Given clear indications that President Biden lacked the capacity to exercise his Presidential authority, if his advisors secretly used the mechanical signature pen to conceal this incapacity, while taking radical executive actions all in his name, that would constitute an unconstitutional wielding of the power of the Presidency, a circumstance that would have implications for the legality and validity of numerous executive actions undertaken in Biden’s name.”
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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