As questions swirl about Joe Biden’s cognitive state and absentee leadership, new scrutiny is falling on the use of the presidential autopen by Biden’s staffers, an automated signature device that has been used to sign executive orders and potentially even pardons.
These staffers, if these reports are accurate, could have engaged in multiple ongoing felonies.
House Oversight Chair Jim Comer (R-KY) has said legislative subpoenas are being sent out, but what crimes could they be pursuing? And something many are asking online: will anyone ever be charged with any crimes?
Nearly all of Biden’s official signatures were done with the autopen. The Biden White House even issued criminal pardons with the autopen. There were two autopens that were in use.
The OversightPR project identified times that Biden’s pardons were issued while Joe Biden was known to be out of the White House on vacation and unable to run the automatic signature machine.
Project Veritas released a video today showing David Hogg admitting that it was Jill Biden’s Chief of Staff who was exerting a tremendous amount of unseen power in the Biden White House.
Trump has said whoever was using the autopen was “usurping the power of the Presidency.”
Who was running the American government under Sleepy Joe Biden?
If reports are accurate that White House staff may have used Biden’s autopen to execute official acts without his direct knowledge or consent, the legal implications are not just alarming, they’re criminal acts.
Biden issued wide-ranging pardons in his last weeks, including a controversial one for his controversial son Hunter, despite promising previously that he would not pardon Hunter. Reports now coming out that Hunter exercised a great deal of power in the Biden White House has some wondering whether Hunter simply issued his own pardon without Joe Biden knowing.
Here’s what relevant federal law says: if anyone in the Executive Office signed legal documents such as pardons, executive orders, diplomatic communications without the President’s full and current awareness, they would likely violate multiple federal statutes, including:
18 U.S.C. § 471 – Forgery of United States Documents
It is a crime to falsely make or use any writing for the purpose of defrauding the United States. Signing the President’s name via autopen on legal instruments without his direct authorization is a textbook example. Maximum penalty: 20 years in prison.
18 U.S.C. § 912 – Impersonation of a Federal Officer
Pretending to be the President—even indirectly by authorizing acts in his name, while exercising that power, unlawfully carries up to 3 years in prison.
18 U.S.C. § 1001 – False Statements
Any deception involving a material act of government, especially in formal documents, exposes the staffer(s) to 5–8 years in prison per count.
18 U.S.C. § 371 – Conspiracy to Defraud the United States
If multiple officials coordinated such actions, even internally, it may be prosecutable as conspiracy.
18 U.S.C. § 1503, 1512 – Obstruction of Justice
If any falsified pardons were used to derail or stop criminal proceedings, such as the Hunter Biden pardon that stopped his charges and likely sentencing, obstruction charges would apply.
18 U.S.C. § 1341, 1343 – Wire or Mail Fraud
The use of email, phone, or interagency transmissions to process these fraudulent signatures might trigger additional felony charges.
A key legal question is going to be who knew what, and when? Since Biden’s cognitive decline was obvious to anyone paying attention, and Justice Department Attorney Robert Hur even noted it in his write-up of Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, it is hard to claim that many were not aware that this was going on.
The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1967, was created to deal with the situation of an incapacitated President. Particularly Section 4 contains the constitutional process designed to address a situation where a sitting President is unable or unfit to discharge the duties of office, but is either unwilling or unable to voluntarily step aside. It allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to declare the President incapacitated and install the VP as Acting President.
If Biden’s decline was ‘stage-managed’ in order to prevent the Cabinet secretaries from being able to observe his mental incapacity, then the staffers involved could be liable for participating in a criminal conspiracy.
Biden’s Press Secretary Jen Psaki claims she never noticed Biden’s mental decline until his May 2024 debate with Trump.
But the Gateway Pundit reported in June 2021 that Biden was speaking gibberish and appeared totally lost. The Gateway Pundit reported in 2020 that it was obvious Biden had dementia. Biden falsely said he was arrested during the Civil Rights movement. Biden falsely claimed in 2021 that he desegregated restaurants during the Civil Rights movement.
On the 2020 campaign trail, Biden told insane, obviously-false, stories about himself.
Even as far back as 2017, Biden invented an incoherent story about growing up with a villain named “Corn Pop” at a local swimming pool. The Washington Post went and ‘investigated’ this senile lie, this obviously-false story by Biden, and rated it “true.” It appears they were part of the effort to keep Biden’s obvious mental decline protected from scrutiny.
Those White House staffers who participated in the cover-up would be potentially liable for being conspirators.
18 U.S.C. § 371 – Conspiracy to Defraud the United States
“If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy…”
This statute doesn’t just require someone to do the illegal act, it criminalizes the agreement and coordination to make it happen. Even if one person “presses the button,” those who helped plan, cover up, or enable it are liable.
This could involve personal liability for several key Biden staffers who were in a position of power and trust within the White House, including:
White House Legal Counsels Dana Remus (2021-2022), Stuart Delery (2022-2023), Ed Siskel (2023-2025), who likely provided approval, even if informal, to the Presidential staff as they wielded Biden’s tremendous power.
White House Chiefs of Staff Ron Klain (2021-2023) and Jeff Zients (2023-2025), who likely directed and at least knew of the use of the autopen to approve key documents.
White House Communications Directors Kate Bedingfield (2021-2023), Ben LaBolt (2023-2025), who helped orchestrate the cover-up from the public, Cabinet Secretaries, and Congress.
From today’s release by Project Veritas, it also appears that former First Lady Jill Biden’s Chief of Staff Anthony Bernal also apparently wielded significant power and authority in the Biden White House.
The White House has so far refused to disclose the internal policies governing autopen use or whether Biden personally reviewed documents before they were signed with his name. The question that must now be answered is not whether Biden used the autopen, but who else did and under what authority?
One possible defense to this might be that these staffers were “authorized” by Biden in a supposedly-lucid moment.
But an incompetent President like Biden is likely to have been incapable of properly authorizing staffers to take these actions.
In the past, to avoid these kind of problems, Presidents often recused themselves for short hospital stays or brief periods where their competence could have been in question. President George W. Bush twice formally invoked the 25th Amendment while getting routine colonoscopies in 2002 and 2007 for several hours, transferring Presidential power to Vice President Dick Cheney. In 1985 Ronald Reagan went through surgery for colon cancer and transferred Presidential power to Vice President George H.W. Bush for about eight hours.
The Office of Legal Counsel previously approved autopen use under very narrow circumstances, primarily for bills where the President has expressly directed its use. But legal direction must be current, active, and informed—not inferred, and certainly not assumed by unelected aides behind closed doors.
If pardons or commutations were issued through the autopen without Biden’s real-time awareness, victims of crime and even federal judges could challenge their validity. Likewise, executive orders tied to sweeping policy changes, on borders, mandates, or foreign policy, could be nullified if the originating authority is found fraudulent.
The court’s primary way of remedying past illegal actions by governmental bodies would be to invalidate the actions altogether. However in this case, with fever-pitch politics at stake, the courts are probably unlikely to take a principled and courageous stand to invalidate the illegal actions taken in Biden’s name.
If military orders or diplomatic recognitions were ever signed in this way, it moves beyond fraud to possible constitutional crisis.
Journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed that Biden engaged in an action of international terrorism when Biden allegedly authorized the underwater bombing of the Russian natural gas pipeline Nordstream II in 2022.
If White House and military officials proceeded with this action on the sole authority of staff, without clearing it by a confused and mentally incapacitated President, there could be enormous liabilities. The Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, for example, could lose governmental immunity for taking such actions without a competent President to hide behind for Presidential immunity.
If Joe Biden is not mentally or physically capable of signing key documents, or even of understanding what’s being signed, then someone else is wielding that power. And if they’re using the autopen without real presidential oversight, they aren’t just breaking protocol, they’re committing felonies.
The extraordinary power of the American Presidency is not meant to be used by staff to issue pardons, sign Executive Orders, and engage in international terrorism with a mentally-incapacitated President at the helm.
This could represent one of the gravest constitutional crises in U.S. history: not merely a question of fitness, but of legitimacy. If a President was being used as a figurehead while real power is secretly exercised elsewhere by unelected staffers, every action of the government in the past four years is potentially illegitimate.
The Obama and Biden Justice Departments were very aggressive in their use of lawfare and political persecutions. They went after conservative media outlets, Republican campaigns and campaign staffers, sought to jail all of the January 6th protesters, and aggressively targeted their perceived political enemies.
Online many are skeptical that Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has so far proven loathe to pursue known Democrat crimes and criminal activities, will follow-up on these possible crimes, though reportedly the Justice Department is ‘probing’ the potential misuse of the autopen.
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