Even Biden's White House staffers 'did not know who operated the autopen': House Oversight report

The House Oversight Committee released a report on Tuesday regarding former President Joe Biden’s autopen usage while he was in office. The 100-page report urged the Department of Justice to review all executive actions taken by Biden while in office, including acts of clemency he issued.

The committee, led by Chair James Comer, investigated "whether senior Biden White House officials possibly exercised the authority of the former president or intentionally concealed President Biden’s rapidly worsening mental and physical state. The Committee has found evidence to indicate they both did."

The report stated that Biden’s senior staff "were willing to conceal the president’s cognitive deterioration as they all stood to gain significantly—financially, politically, and professionally— by continuing to operate the presidency from behind the scenes."

Biden’s physician, Dr Kevin O’Connor, "did not perform a cognitive assessment of President Biden and invoked his Fifth Amendment right when questioned by the Committee. Testimony suggests that Dr. O’Connor’s medical judgments were influenced by political advisors and that his financial ties to the Biden family presented conflicts of interest," the committee said. Senior officials testified that political advisors "interfered with decisions regarding President Biden’s medical evaluations, explicitly rejecting calls for cognitive testing to protect his reelection prospects."

"The investigation revealed holes in the chain of custody of the president’s decision binder, which contained decision memos to be signed or initialed by President Biden when approving or disapproving executive actions, as well as numerous instances in which the president’s approval for an executive action or the chief of staff’s approval of signature by autopen was not memorialized.

"Among the most flagrant of these instances are the clemency actions taken in the final days of the Biden presidency, which not only lacked a decision memo, but also raised serious concerns from President Biden’s own Department of Justice ethics attorneys about whether 'the President was aware of the [criminal] backgrounds when making clemency decisions' involving violent convicted criminals."

The investigation found that there was "no proper chain of custody for the documents which predicated President Biden’s executive actions, and a cohort of people, including residence staff, had access to them," and that Biden "allegedly made some executive decisions verbally, and without documentation indicating that they came from the president himself or that he understood the decisions completely."

Senior White House officials testified that they "did not know who operated the autopen and its use was not sufficiently controlled or documented to prevent abuse."

The investigation found that White House staff "may have ignored internal Biden Administration recommendations that President Biden hand-sign pardons and other documents," and that Biden-era DOJ attorneys "raised serious concerns about the pardon review process and President Biden’s awareness of the violent criminal records of clemency recipients."

"The inner circle propped up the former president throughout his entire term and kept him in the 2024 presidential race despite indisputable evidence (acknowledged even today by only a few Democrats) that the former president was no longer fully in command."

Chairman Comer has also requested that the District of Columbia Board of Medicine "review the actions taken by Dr. O’Connor while serving as the White House physician to President Biden for any potential wrongdoing in the medical care of the former president—including whether Dr. O’Connor produced false or misleading medical reports to the American people."

"The cost of the scheme to hide the fallout of President Biden’s diminished physical and mental acuity was great but will likely never be fully calculated. The cover-up put American national security at risk and the nation’s trust in its leaders in jeopardy. Despite aides’ best efforts to conceal President Biden’s cognitive deterioration from the country, the former president’s legacy is clouded with this scandal, as evidenced by President Biden’s eventual withdrawal from the 2024 election."

"Barring evidence of executive actions taken during the Biden presidency showing that President Biden indeed took a particular executive action, the Committee deems those actions taken through use of the autopen as void. The validity of the executive actions allegedly approved and signed (largely by autopen) by President Biden must be reviewed to determine whether legal action is necessary to ameliorate consequences of any illegitimate pardons granted, or executive actions implemented, throughout the Biden Autopen Presidency."

"The Committee finds numerous executive actions—particularly clemency actions—taken during the Biden Administration were illegitimate. Therefore, the Committee urges the Department of Justice to investigate all executive actions attributed to President Joe Biden.”