House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer is calling on the Justice Department to open an investigation into who may have authorized the widespread use of the autopen during former President Joe Biden’s scandal-plagued term.
In a 100-page report released Tuesday, the Republican-led committee alleged that members of Biden’s inner circle concealed the president’s cognitive decline and relied on an autopen — a mechanical device that reproduces a person’s signature — to authorize executive actions, pardons, and other official decisions without Biden’s direct involvement.
“Faced with the cognitive decline of President Joe Biden, White House aides — at the direction of the inner circle — hid the truth about the former president’s condition and fitness for office,” the report charged, as reported by Fox News.
The report criticized what it described as a “haphazard documentation process” for presidential pardons under Biden, alleging that the irregularities cast doubt on whether the former president personally approved the clemency decisions.
“In the absence of sufficient contemporaneous documentation indicating that cognitively deteriorating President Biden himself made a given executive decision, such decisions do not carry the force of law and should be considered void,” said the report.
Comer is urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to review all executive actions taken between Biden’s inauguration and departure, particularly his controversial pardons. “Given the patterns and findings detailed herein,” the report continued, “this review should focus particularly on all acts of clemency. However, it should also include all other types of executive actions.”
The Oversight Committee’s investigation also questioned Hunter Biden’s reported role in the pardon process. According to testimony from former White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, Hunter Biden was present during discussions about “preemptive pardons” that were considered for members of the Biden family.
Comer said Tuesday that “every pardon” signed by Biden should be considered “null and void,” arguing that the process was marked by inconsistencies and lacked evidence of Biden’s direct participation.
He made the remarks during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
“Every person who we deposed had a different story on what the proper process was that they followed in using the autopen to sign a legal document,” Comer said on “The Ingraham Angle.”
“Their stories were inconsistent and then, when you throw in the emails from the Garland Department of Justice expressing concern to these very staffers about the excessive use of the autopen and asking point-blank questions, what was their process, then the entire story is changed. So the inconsistencies abound,” he added.
Over a three-month period, the House Oversight Committee interviewed 14 witnesses — including several longtime aides to President Biden — in more than 47 hours of testimony. Chair James Comer said the testimony revealed what he described as a troubling pattern of denial and concealment within Biden’s inner circle.
“One thing that is consistent is the fact that no one saw Joe Biden, no one who authorized the autopen or actually physically manually pressed the power button on autopen ever heard directly from Joe Biden, and, furthermore, there are no notes, there’s no chain of custody that would show that Joe Biden was involved in any meetings where they discussed the pardon process,” Comer said Tuesday.
“This is appalling, and everyone in America saw during the debate and during the last few months of the Biden administration, this was a president in decline. The staffers confirmed that they would go weeks, months and even years without communicating with Joe Biden,” he continued.
He then declared: “This is a massive cover-up, and what we determined was every pardon should be declared null and void.”
A 2005 Justice Department opinion issued during the George W. Bush administration concluded that a president may lawfully use an autopen to sign bills and other official documents, permitting the chief executive to authorize staff to apply his signature by mechanical means.
Republicans contend that questions over Biden’s cognitive health create lingering concerns.
