President Donald Trump dismissed former President Joe Biden’s insistence that he “made the decisions” while president, calling his predecessor’s regular use of the autopen to sign executive orders a “scandal” in response to a question from National Review in the Oval Office.
Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday directing the White House counsel, Justice Department, and other relevant authorities to investigate the matter, claiming that it has “become increasingly apparent” that White House aides used the president’s mechanical signature pen to “conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority.”
Trump suggested on Thursday that his predecessor was so cognitively impaired that he wasn’t aware of many policy decisions that were made by his White House relating to presidential memoranda, clemency grants, and executive orders, suggesting that White House aides were making those decisions instead.
“He was never for open borders. He was never for transgender for everybody. He was never for men playing in women’s sports. I mean, he changed all of these things that changed so radically,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, when pressed by National Review for his reaction to Biden’s dismissal of the investigation. “I said it during the debate, and I say it now: he didn’t have much of an idea of what was going on.”
“Essentially, whoever used the auto pen was the president,” Trump said.
The Trump administration’s investigation into the matter is welcome news to congressional Republicans who have long demanded a robust probe into which senior Biden administration were calling the shots and when. And it comes as the 46th president tries to defend his legacy amid new challenges surrounding his physical and cognitive decline, including a series of new books on the matter and the audio release of his sit-down interviews with Robert Hur, the special counsel charged with investigating his mishandling of classified documents.
Biden released a statement on Thursday pushing back against the Trump administration’s probe into allegations that top Biden officials conspired to mislead the public about Biden’s mental decline while arrogating to themselves Biden’s authority as president.
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” Biden said in a statement, which notably stopped short of saying no executive aides had access to the autopen. In his statement, the former president suggested the administration’s investigation into the matter is a “distraction” from Republican legislative efforts to “cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.”
Also this week, Biden’s former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced that she is releasing a book about her decision to leave the Democratic Party. Former Biden administration officials reacted to the news by anonymously bashing her intelligence, preparedness, and fitness for the role in numerous news reports.
Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Trump called Biden’s use of the autopen “disrespectful” and said that the president should use a real signature when signing executive orders and even ambassadorships.
“Autopen, to me, are used when thousands of letters come in from young people all over the country and you want to get them back. And you know, people use auto pens for that — to send a little signature at the bottom of a letter,” Trump added. “We get thousands of letters a week, and it’s not possible to even though I’d like to do it myself. You can’t do it. To me, that’s where autopens start and stop.”