Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a probe into former President Joe Bidenâs alleged use of a digital autopen after a Tuesday House report cast doubt on the validity of his criminal pardons.
The House Oversight Committee recommended that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate the pardons and any other executive orders that may have relied on his staffâs autopen in its report, saying the orders âcannot all be deemed his own.â Bidenâs pardons of his son and other family members and clemency orders for violent criminals present the most glaring concerns, the report says.
â new information is extremely helpful, and his leadership on this issue is invaluable,â Bondi said in a Tuesday X post. âWeâll continue working with to deliver accountability for the American people.â
Bidenâs personal office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundationâs request for comment.
The aging Democratic figure, whose cognitive decline led him to drop out of the 2024 presidential race under pressure from his party, outsourced basic tasks to his close staffers in the waning days of his presidency and was under heavy supervision, the committee wrote, citing interviews of those involved. The investigations showed âholes in the chain of custodyâ regarding Bidenâs decision binder, lawmakers wrote.
This pattern of behavior allegedly led staffers to apply via autopen Bidenâs digital signature to the pardons for his family members in January without documenting the decision, according to the committee.
âThe authority to grant pardons is not provided to the presidentâs inner circle,â the House Oversight Committee wrote. âNor can it be delegated to particular staff when a presidentâs competency is in question. Importantly, even if this authority could be delegated â which it cannot â it would have to be expressly delegated by President Biden himself.â
âThe Committee deems void all executive actions signed by the autopen without proper, corresponding, contemporaneous, written approval traceable to the presidentâs own consent,â the report said.
Multiple former staffers invoked the Fifth Amendment in interviews with the committee to remain silent on certain topics in the investigation, the committee said.
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