Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., told Newsmax on Wednesday that Americans deserve to know who the "autopen in chief" was during the Biden administration amid former President Joe Biden's apparent cognitive decline.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Britt is a member, earlier in the day held a hearing titled "Unfit to Serve: How the Biden Cover-Up Endangered America and Undermined the Constitution." The hearing came two weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for an investigation, claiming that it has "become increasingly apparent" that White House aides used the autopen to "conceal Biden's cognitive decline and assert Article II authority."
"There is no doubt that [Biden] was of diminished mental capacity," Britt told "American Agenda." "And the question becomes, Who was actually making these decisions? Whether it is pardons or you look at the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that sent shock waves not just through that region but the entire world that we are paying the consequences for today."
Britt continued: "Whether it was a border that was overflowed by millions and millions of migrants. Whether it was unaccompanied children by the hundreds of thousands that he let into our interior with no protection. Whether it was fentanyl overdoses of American citizens where we had people dying in every corner of this country.
"We can go down a list of things that were occurring. And what we know is that while Joe Biden was the president, somebody else was making the decisions. And we need answers to who that was."
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, last month sent letters to Biden's physician, Kevin O'Connor, and former White House aides Neera Tanden, Anthony Bernal, Annie Tomasini and Ashley Williams demanding they appear for transcribed interviews.
At the hearing Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., were the only Democrats to attend the opening. Durbin, the committee's ranking member, walked out after referring to the hearing as a distraction from issues such as Trump's deployment of the military to respond to immigration protests in Los Angeles.
"Look, we deserve answers," Britt said. "The American people deserve answers. And the fact that my Democratic colleagues today couldn't show up and try to help us get those, I think, tells the American people everything they need to know."
Britt railed against former Vice President Kamala Harris and members of Biden's Cabinet for ignoring Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which provides a template for the transfer of power if a president is unable to perform their duties.
"My questions were, Do we need more guardrails here?" Britt said. "Do we need more definition here because clearly it didn't work? Or did they choose to not step up in good faith as they should? So that's question No. 1. No. 2 is senior staff. Look, I have been a senior staffer myself. When you have the honor to work in this building, when you have the honor to work to make our country better, you take an oath as well.
"Those people who took an oath, who chose to turn the other way, or even worse, chose to conceal this from the American people: We deserve accountability from them, as well. That's who needs to be sitting in front of us."
She added that it is a fundamental urgency.
"We need to know what happened, and we need to ensure that it never happens again," she said. "This has been disastrous for the American people, and I am absolutely sick of hearing my Democratic colleagues try to lecture us about democracy when the very fundamental nature of our democracy, our commander in chief, we know was not in command. And the American people did and continue to pay the price as a result of that."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.