House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer says his investigation into Joe Biden’s mental decline could be used to challenge some of the former president’s pardons and executive orders, arguing staff have failed to prove Biden knew what he was signing in his final months in office.
The Kentucky Republican told “Just the News, No Noise” TV show on Friday that Biden’s frequent use of the autopen raises serious legal concerns.
“It’s questionable whether or not it’s legal to use an autopen on a legal document, but what’s not questionable is if the President of the United States had no idea what was being signed with using the autopen in his name,” Comer said. “Then, you know, that’s not legal. We could see criminal charges against some.”
Comer said his committee’s evidence could also be used to call into question some of Biden’s clemency acts, noting that the president’s poor summer 2024 debate performance “gave rise to questions about his mental capacity.” Biden dropped out of the race one month later and endorsed Kamala Harris.
“I think at the end of the day, our investigation … could be used as evidence in trying to overturn some of those pardons and some of the executive orders, because the autopen was used so frequently … after that debate,” Comer said.
Former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz told Just the News in March that such challenges would “end up in court.” He explained there would be two main issues: “One, the nature of what was signed – was it a pardon, or was it a bill from Congress, for example. And second, the nature of the autopen.”
Dershowitz said the Constitution states of bills: “‘If he approves, he shall sign it.’ So it says, ‘sign it.’ Sign it. So an autopen would raise a real problem if he signed it by autopen, which is not a real signature.” On pardons, he said, “it will still raise the issue: Did he actually pardon? Or did somebody else just write the signature without really getting approval from President Biden?”
Biden’s first debate of the 2024 campaign season was described as “halting” and “disoriented,” with former Obama adviser David Axelrod saying, “I think there was a sense of shock actually, how he came out at the beginning of this debate… I think the panic had set in.”
Republicans had long questioned Biden’s mental capacity. Special Counsel Robert Hur’s February 2025 report on Biden’s handling of classified documents noted he “would likely present himself… as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur said Biden could not recall the years he was vice president or the year his son Beau died.
After Biden left office, Comer launched an investigation into how senior officials managed the president’s decline and used the autopen to sign official acts. Neera Tanden, Biden’s former Domestic Policy Council director, told the committee she “had minimal interaction with President Biden” and would send memos to his inner circle for approval. She said she had “no visibility” into what happened before getting the go-ahead for autopen use.
Several close aides, including Biden’s former physician Dr. Kevin O’Conner, invoked the Fifth Amendment. Comer said that was telling: “When you asked Dr. O’Connor… were you ever told to lie about President Joe Biden’s health? And he can’t answer that. He has to plead the Fifth… I think that’s pretty damning evidence that we had a president that wasn’t at the top of his game, to say the least.”
Biden defended his decisions to The New York Times last month, saying, “I made every decision” on pardons, though aides confirmed he “did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons.”