A stunning investigation into the legality of former President Joe Biden’s controversial last-minute pardons was just launched by the Trump Justice Department, officials announced Tuesday.
Legal experts have said that the former president’s use of an autopen device could render thousands of his presidential actions “null and void” if he lacked the mental capacity to consent. Biden’s mental capacity was in clear decline in his last years in office, and new information about the length of the cover-up inside the Biden White House has come to the surface in recent months.
Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney and head of the weaponization task force, sent an email to staff Monday announcing he has been directed to investigate whether Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.”
The investigation focuses, in part, on Biden’s sweeping preemptive pardons granted to five family members just 48 hours before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, as well as his commutation of 37 federal death row sentences. The pardons for Biden’s siblings James Biden, Frank Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, and their spouses John Owens and Sara Biden were backdated to 2014, raising even more questions about the unprecedented nature of these actions.
Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said that the autopen scandal could invalidate massive portions of Biden’s presidency if proper consent wasn’t obtained.
“Autopens … are legal as long as there is consent. But if Joe Biden never consented or worse, he had no knowledge, then those documents, whether they’re pardons or executive orders, as you point out, David, they’re null and void,” Jarrett explained. “If Biden was not even competent to consent, you’ve got the same result: null and void.”
“The difficulty, of course, is proving it and that’s why these congressional hearings upcoming are so imperative. Who operated the autopen and did that person receive written authorization and verification as required?”
The investigation has large enough implications that could expose the biggest political scandal in modern American history.
Martin revealed he has been working with a high-level whistleblower who provided shocking details about who was really running the country during Biden’s presidency.
“I had a whistleblower in my office 10 days ago — senior, senior Democrat — saying, ‘Look, it was these three people that controlled access, and they were making money off of it,'” Martin told journalist Mark Halperin.
Martin identified who he suspected acted as “gatekeepers” and controlled access to Biden and potentially wielded the autopen without his knowledge: former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Biden’s Senior Advisor Anita Dunn, and Barack Obama’s former personal attorney Robert Bauer.
The DOJ official also named two other “dominant characters” who had enormous influence during Biden’s decline: Steve Ricchetti, former Counselor to President Biden, and “obviously Jill (Biden).”
The autopen scandal goes far beyond pardons. A government watchdog conducted a devastating review of executive orders signed by autopen under the Biden administration and found “no evidence” that Biden was even aware of major policy decisions being made in his name.
The watchdog reportedly analyzed multiple executive orders involving climate policy dating back to 2021, and said there existed “no evidence that Biden ordered it, directed it, or was even aware it was happening in his name,” according to the group’s Executive Director.
Jarrett pointed to reports that Biden was “so mentally enfeebled he was … commandeered by a group of senior aides calling themselves the Politburo, and if that is true, it’s prima facie evidence that decisions were unauthorized under the Constitution.”
If America was actually governed by unelected bureaucrats wielding an autopen while the supposed president was mentally incapacitated, it would indeed represent the biggest constitutional crisis and political scandal in modern history.
Biden had already pardoned his son Hunter Biden on December 1, after Hunter pleaded guilty to tax violations and was convicted on firearms-related charges. In that statement, Biden alleged that Hunter had been “singled out” due to being the president’s son while accusing “political opponents” of seeking to “break” both him and his son.
Trump declared in a March 17 Truth Social post that pardons issued by Biden to members of the House committee investigating January 6 were invalid due to autopen use, setting the stage for this broader investigation into the scope of Biden’s mental incapacity.
The investigation will be a key focus of the upcoming June 18 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing into the alleged cover-up of Biden’s cognitive decline. Congressional Republicans are demanding answers about who was really making presidential decisions while Biden was clearly unfit for office.
Martin, who previously served as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, told reporters last month he viewed presidential pardon power as “plenary,” meaning absolute.
“If you use the autopen for pardon power, I don’t think that that’s necessarily a problem” — as long as the president is aware of which pardons he’s signing.
The investigation represents a critical test of constitutional authority and presidential competence. If Biden lacked the mental capacity to understand and consent to major presidential actions, then those decisions were made without legitimate constitutional authority.
The American people deserve to know who was actually running their government during one of the most challenging periods in recent history.
The fact that serious questions exist about whether the sitting president was even aware of major executive orders and pardons represents a fundamental breakdown of constitutional governance.