Photo: Alamy
The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday released its final report on former President Joe Biden’s use of an autopen for official actions, concluding that at least some of the documents signed with the device were invalid and urging the Justice Department to investigate.
The committee began examining Biden’s use of the mechanical signature device earlier this year, focusing on pardons and other executive directives issued near the end of his term. Lawmakers sought to determine whether Biden had personally approved those decisions or whether top aides had acted without proper authority.
Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chair of the Oversight panel, said three months of interviews with senior White House staff raised questions about the legitimacy of several orders. He argued that aides did not sufficiently demonstrate that Biden was aware of or directly involved in actions authenticated with the autopen.
“The Biden Autopen Presidency will go down as one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. As Americans saw President Biden’s decline with their own eyes, Biden’s inner circle sought to deceive the public, cover-up his decline, and took unauthorized executive actions with the autopen that are now invalid,” Comer said in a statement.
“Executive actions performed by the Biden White House staff and signed by autopen are null and void,” he added. “We are calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct a thorough review of these executive actions and scrutinize key Biden aides who took the Fifth to hide their participation in the cover-up. We have provided Americans with transparency about the Biden Autopen Presidency, and now there must be accountability.”
According to the report, the committee conducted 14 depositions and transcribed interviews, including two former White House chiefs of staff, the president’s personal physician, and senior advisers. The physician and the chief of staff to former First Lady Jill Biden invoked their Fifth Amendment rights in response to questions from investigators.
Investigators said the probe revealed what the committee described as alarming deficiencies in recordkeeping tied to key presidential decisions. The report states that senior aides at times directed the use of the autopen on Biden’s behalf without written evidence documenting the president’s approval.
The document also cites examples where approval was given verbally or through informal communication, rather than through a clear record that could be reviewed after the fact.