House Republicans deem Biden pardons ‘illegitimate’

The GOP-led panel has cited the alleged abuse of the autopen by the ex-president’s aides, who supposedly covered up his mental decline.

Joe Biden’s “inner circle” made concerted efforts to conceal the former US president’s “cognitive decline” during his time in office, a report by the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has claimed. The Republican-led panel also questioned some of the pardons that bore his signature, alleging that his aides had unimpeded access to his autopen.

In a document released on Tuesday titled ‘The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House’, the committee chaired by Rep. James Comer concluded that “Biden’s inner circle of loyalists [attempted] to mislead the nation” regarding the president’s “diminishing mental and physical capabilities.” The lawmakers said this bore all the hallmarks of a “cover-up.”

“As President Biden declined, his staff abused the autopen and a lax chain-of-command policy to effect executive actions that lack any documentation of whether they were in fact authorized,” the committee alleged.

The panel singled out the “clemency actions taken in the final days of the Biden presidency” affecting violent convicted criminals.

In light of the above, “the Committee deems void all executive actions signed by the autopen without proper, corresponding, contemporaneous, written approval traceable to the president’s own consent,” the report said.

The lawmakers called on the District of Columbia Board of Medicine to review the conduct of Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked whether he had been ordered to lie about the former president’s health.

The committee also recommended that the Department of Justice investigate several other senior members of the Biden administration.

Commenting on the report, Biden’s spokesperson dismissed its findings, insisting that “there was no conspiracy, no cover-up and no wrongdoing.”

In May, President Donald Trump accused his predecessor’s senior aides of committing “treason at the highest level” by allegedly implementing unauthorized policies using Biden’s autopen – a device used to replicate a person’s signature.