Attorney General Pam Bondi just dropped a bombshell that’s got Washington buzzing with questions about former President Joe Biden’s pardons.
Newsweek reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is diving headfirst into an investigation of Biden’s use of an autopen for signing pardons, following a scathing House Republican report that alleges his mental decline led to decisions being made without his full awareness.
This probe kicked off on Tuesday when Bondi announced the review, hot on the heels of the GOP report’s release that same day.
Compiled over months before a government shutdown began, the report paints a grim picture of Biden’s inner circle allegedly orchestrating a cover-up of his cognitive struggles.
It zeros in on pardons—75 in total, including a dozen-plus on his last full day in office—granted to folks like his son, Hunter, and brother, James, claiming some were signed via autopen without Biden’s direct knowledge.
The report, while short on fresh revelations, leans hard on unanswered questions from interviews with over a dozen of Biden’s closest advisors, suggesting a breakdown in the chain of command due to lax record-keeping.
House Republicans aren’t pulling punches, targeting Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, and senior aides Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini, all of whom took the Fifth rather than testify.
They’ve even gone so far as to urge the D.C. Board of Medicine to discipline O’Connor, potentially stripping his license, while calling for further Justice Department scrutiny of these key players. Now, if that’s not a red flag about accountability in the highest office, what is?
House Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t mince words, telling reporters on Tuesday, “No previous president had an autopen, or dared to have people signing things on their behalf when they didn’t even know what was in it.”
Johnson’s frustration is palpable, and it’s hard not to wonder if we’ve let unelected aides wield too much power under the guise of executive efficiency—surely, that’s not what the Founders had in mind.
Similarly, Representative James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, declared, “The Biden Autopen Presidency will go down as one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history.”
Democrats, predictably, are crying foul, with the House Oversight Committee’s ranking member, Robert Garcia, dismissing the investigation as a distraction from more pressing issues like healthcare access.
While they insist Biden was fully in charge of every executive action, including autopen use, one can’t help but question if this defense is just a convenient shield against deeper scrutiny of a progressive administration’s missteps.
Legal experts also caution that this kind of broad examination of executive actions could boomerang on the current administration, creating a slippery slope for future Republican policies—ironic, isn’t it, how the tables might turn?