The GOP-led House Oversight Committee has denounced former President Joe Biden’s pardons as ‘illegitimate,’ asserting that his aides abused the autopen. The report accuses Biden’s inner circle of conspiring to conceal his declining mental state and unauthorized executive actions. The committee concluded that these actions lacked proper documentation and authorization. The findings have led to calls for investigations into several senior Biden administration members as well as the review of Biden’s physician’s conduct.
According to the report titled ‘The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House,’ the committee chaired by Rep. James Comer concluded that Biden’s inner circle of loyalists attempted to mislead the nation regarding the president’s diminishing mental and physical capabilities. The lawmakers said this bore all the hallmarks of a ‘cover-up.’
As President Biden declined, his staff abused the autopen and a lax chain-of-command policy to effect executive actions that lack any documentation of whether they were in fact authorized, the committee alleged. The panel singled out the ‘clemency actions taken in the final days of the Biden presidency’ affecting violent convicted criminals. The committee deems void all executive actions signed by the autopen without proper, corresponding, contemporaneous, written approval traceable to the president’s own consent, the report said.
The lawmakers called on the District of Columbia Board of Medicine to review the conduct of Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked whether he had been ordered to lie about the former president’s health. The committee also recommended that the Department of Justice investigate several other senior members of the Biden administration. Commenting on the report, Biden’s spokesperson dismissed its findings, insisting that ‘there was no conspiracy, no cover-up and no wrongdoing.’
In May, President Donald Trump accused his predecessor’s senior aides of committing ‘treason at the highest level’ by allegedly implementing unauthorized policies using Biden’s autopen, a device used to replicate a person’s signature. This marks another chapter in the ongoing political clashes between former leaders and current administration figures.