Former President Joe Biden skilled such “cognitive decline” whereas in workplace that it stays a critical query as as to if he was conscious of the substance of the varied pardons and commutations signed in his title via autopen, the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee asserted in a letter it despatched to Attorney General Pam Bondi, urging her to think about whether or not that clemency is perhaps invalid and to take motion for potential prosecution towards a few of Biden’s aides.
The committee “deems void President Biden’s executive actions that were signed using the Autopen, and the committee determines that action by the Department of Justice is warranted to address the legal consequences of that determination,” it wrote to Bondi launched Tuesday morning.
The letter was made public alongside a 93-page report outlining the committee’s conclusions from its months-long investigation into Biden’s use of the autopen. It alleged the committee had discovered “a cover-up of the president’s cognitive decline” and “no record demonstrating President Biden himself made all of the executive decisions that were attributed to him.”
Biden has publicly disputed that, saying he made all selections as president and calling Republicans who’ve instructed in any other case “liars.”
To help its assertions, the committee report consists of excerpts of interviews with 14 former senior Biden aides, however the panel didn’t instantly present the complete transcripts. Although the committee raised critical questions in regards to the Biden administration’s course of for awarding pardons, it didn’t cite any direct proof that anybody aside from Biden made the choices that his workers later put in force. Instead, the committee pointed to a scarcity of clear information indicating that Biden was the decision-maker. The panel didn’t subpoena Biden to testify in the probe.
Democrats are more likely to criticize the panel’s conclusions as partisan and unsurprising.
Republicans have lengthy raised questions on Biden’s psychological state, however in releasing the report, the GOP-led committee appeared to counsel a path for continued impacts of its work.
The letter particularly requested that the Justice Department additional examine three high Biden White House aides who invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify to the committee: former White House doctor Dr. Kevin O’Connor, and Biden aides Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini.
Invoking the Fifth Amendment is often carried out to keep away from answering particular questions. Though it may be perceived by the general public as a manner of avoiding accountability, the US Supreme Court has lengthy regarded the best towards self-incrimination as a venerable a part of the Constitution and, in authorized proceedings, tried to make sure that a witness’ silence not be considered as proof of guilt.
The Committee additionally wrote to the Board of Medicine for Washington, DC, requesting that it examine whether or not O’Connor ought to be disciplined in any method for “issuing misleading medical reports, misrepresenting treatments, failing to conform to standards of practice, or other acts of violation of District of Columbia law regulating licensed physicians.”
Former Biden chief of workers Jeff Zients told the committee that after Biden’s disastrous debate efficiency final 12 months, he really helpful O’Connor conduct a full medical workup, together with a cognitive examination, and O’Connor mentioned he would take the suggestion below advisement.
The e-book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” co-authored by NCS’s Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, documented how Biden, his closest aides and his household solid forward with the previous president’s doomed 2024 reelection bid regardless of indicators of his bodily and psychological decline.
“Our report reveals how key aides colluded to mislead the public and the extraordinary measures they took to sustain the appearance of presidential authority as Biden’s capacity to function independently diminished. Executive actions performed by Biden White House staff and signed by autopen are null and void,” mentioned Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer, the committee’s chairman, mentioned in a press release that known as for accountability.
The committee’s assertion that Bondi search to behave on their declaration of Biden’s actions as “void” instructed they had been exploring authorized methods to undo his grants of clemency. Such a transfer would doubtless face vital authorized challenges; there is no such thing as a mechanism or precedent to reverse a pardon issued by a previous president, authorized specialists say. In 2005, throughout the second Bush administration, the Justice Department seemed on the legality of a president’s use of the autopen and endorsed it – as long as the choice got here from the president.
Even earlier than the committee’s motion, the Justice Department and the White House had been wanting into Biden’s use of the autopen, which had lengthy been a fixation of President Donald Trump.
NCS reported in May that Ed Martin, who now heads the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group to look into whether or not alleged efforts by the earlier administrations to improperly use the levers of presidency, had been analyzing Biden’s previous pardons.
In June, Trump issued an executive order instructing Bondi and the White House counsel to conduct “an investigation into who ran the United States while President Biden was in office,” in addition to Biden’s use of an autopen for essential orders. That probe was to incorporate “who authorized its use, and the validity of the resulting Presidential policy decisions.”
The Biden camp responded to the manager order with a written assertion calling Trump’s assertions “ridiculous and false.” “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations,” the assertion mentioned.
Biden then spoke to New York Times reporters on the cellphone, telling the newspaper in a 10-minute interview that he “made every decision” and pardoned individuals proactively so they might not face pricey Justice Department investigations when Trump took over.
“Everybody knows how vindictive he is, so we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now,” Biden advised The Times on the time, including, “I consciously made all those decisions.”
As president, Biden issued pardons and commutations to 4,245 individuals – extra acts of clemency than every other president. Perhaps most controversially, he preemptively pardoned outstanding Trump critics and members of his circle of relatives, together with his son who was convicted of federal tax-related prices, fearing they is perhaps focused for retribution when Trump took workplace for a second time.
“These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing,” Biden wrote on the time in a press release in regards to the preliminary batch of pardons, issued hours earlier than he was set to welcome Trump to the White House for tea earlier than attending his swearing-in. “Baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety and financial security of targeted individuals and their families.”
The final part of the report sought to stipulate points with Biden’s use of the autopen.
While former staffers like Bruce Reed mentioned the Biden administration’s follow for pardons was like “the prior two administrations” for whom he served, the House Oversight Committee raised questions on how the pardons had been applied.
The committee targeted particularly on the dearth of documentation round a key in-person assembly the place the pardons for Biden’s household, Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley and members of the January 6 Committee had been allegedly finalized.
The pardons had been conveyed by a “game of telephone,” the committee mentioned. The report famous Biden’s resolution was conveyed by Reed and White House Counsel Ed Siskel to Rosa Po, an aide to White House chief of workers Jeff Zients. From there, Po known as Zients, Zients approved Po to ship an e-mail authorizing the usage of autopen to signal the pardons, and Po despatched the e-mail to the workers secretary’s workplace, who then advised somebody to make use of the autopen for pardons.
“In light of the former president’s cognitive deterioration and the cover-up from his inner circle, this ‘approval’ process calls into question the validity of all pardons reportedly granted by President Biden throughout his tenure,” the committee acknowledged, deeming “void” each govt motion signed by the Joe Biden autopen “without proper, corresponding, contemporaneous, written approval traceable to the president’s own consent.”
The panel’s final report highlighted former Biden White House staffers’ testimony in which they expressed levels of confusion in regards to the decision-making course of.
Former White House Staff Secretary Neera Tanden, who was answerable for managing paper move to the president, advised committee investigators that she didn’t know what occurred to the choice e-book between when she gave the supplies to the Oval Office operations staff and obtained it again with Biden’s signature, the report alleges. Zients mentioned in one other excerpt that he didn’t know who really operated the autopen and shared that Hunter Biden did participate in among the pardon discussions. And former White House chief of workers Ron Klain testified throughout one portion of his interview that Biden made some govt selections “orally,” however the excerpt didn’t tackle whether or not that pertained to pardon selections.
“The Biden White House’s executive decision-making procedures were so lax that the chain of custody for a given decision is difficult or impossible to establish,” the panel wrote. “Documents that were used to predicate executive actions should be sufficiently traceable to ensure they reflect the will of the president. Instead, the Biden White House’s flimsy procedure appears to have been extremely vulnerable to abuse.”
According to Pew Research, 96% of Biden’s acts of clemency had been in the final three months and 20 days of his presidency. The then-president declared the commutations had been going to “non violent” drug offenders, however in accordance with Justice Department emails obtained by the committee, Justice Department ethics lawyer Bradley Weinsheimer wrote to Biden White House workers: “I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading.”
With little time to vet the checklist of these to obtain commutation, Weinsheimer wrote that he and his staff recognized “19 that were highly problematic,” 16 of whom Biden granted clemency, together with “violent offenders, including those who committed acts of violence during the offense of conviction, or who otherwise have a history of violence…” For instance, Marvin Gabrion, whose loss of life sentence Biden commuted in favor of a time period of life in jail, was convicted of kidnapping and murdering 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman and her 11-month-old daughter two days earlier than he was scheduled to be tried on rape prices.
“I have no idea if the president was aware of these backgrounds when making clemency decisions,” Weinsheimer wrote.