House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) announced Friday that the committee has launched an investigation into former President Joe Biden’s use of an autopen to authorize a series of controversial last-minute pardons.
“So our newest investigation at [the] Oversight Committee is we’re investigating the autopen, and I think we’ve identified the staffer” who was using it, the chairman said during a speech at the Republican National Lawyers Association’s policy conference in Washington, according to the Washington Examiner.
The committee’s investigation focuses on whether President Biden, whose cognitive health was reportedly deteriorating in his final months in office, was mentally capable of authorizing the use of the autopen for official documents, or if senior aides issued the pardons without his direct involvement.
“If what we think is going to play out on the autopen [investigation], it’s going to create a strong case on the pardons,” Comer said.
While the autopen has been used by presidents for decades, most notably by President Barack Obama in 2011 to extend the Patriot Act, its use for issuing pardons has never been tested in court. A 2005 Justice Department opinion stated that a president may authorize someone else to sign on their behalf. However, a federal appeals court ruled last year that a pardon does not even require a written document to be legally valid, the Examiner reported.
Legal experts indicate that certain elements of the recent pardons, particularly President Biden’s blanket pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, may pose constitutional questions.
“A blanket pardon might be problematic because it’s not clear what you’re pardoning somebody for,” Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler told the outlet previously.
In an interview with the Examiner after the conference, Comer said, “We just are trying to figure out who gave the orders, if anybody gave the orders,” to use the autopen on the pardons.
During a Q&A session with the audience, Comer confirmed that House Republicans have discussed the possibility of amending the Constitution to prohibit presidents from pardoning themselves or their family members. Comer added that he recently spoke with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) about the idea.
The announcement follows a growing controversy that gained traction in March, when President Donald Trump and his allies raised concerns over Biden’s final clemency orders. Trump argued that many of the pardons, having been signed using an autopen, were “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.”
Among those granted last-minute clemency by President Biden were several close family members—including his brothers James B. Biden and Francis W. Biden, sister-in-law Sara Jones Biden, sister Valerie Biden Owens, and brother-in-law John T. Owens—as well as prominent political figures such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, and former Republican January 6 Committee members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
While some legal experts have defended the use of the autopen as a valid method for executing presidential authority, critics argue that Biden may not have been mentally fit to authorize its use.
Concerns over his cognitive and physical condition have intensified in recent days, ahead of the release of “Original Sin,” a book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, which alleges that top aides actively worked to conceal the extent of Biden’s cognitive decline from the public.
Also, Biden’s pardons may have cast a dark cloud over those who received them because they can no longer hide from telling the truth.
Experts say that means that they cannot use their Fifth Amendment protections to avoid testifying to Congress, according to a new report. And if they were to lie to Congress, they would not be covered by their pardons for that crime, it added.
“The thing is, about these pardons, they’re a mistake. If you want to know what’s happening, they just made it a lot easier for us to find out,” Journalist Matt Taibbi noted in a recent interview.