We Have a Right to Know Who Propped Up Biden

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the concealment of President Joe Biden's seeming cognitive decline, shedding light on the apparent misuse of the presidential autopen.

President Donald Trump wrote in a June 4 memorandum, "This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history."

The chief speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, Kenneth Khachigian, recently wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, in which he concludes that Americans have been "cynically hoodwinked" so much so that "Mr. Biden's using an autopen" — assuming he actually knew about it — "and Attorney General Merrick Garland's declining to release the audio of the president's interview with [special counsel] Robert Hur are small potatoes amid this vast whitewash of history."

Small potatoes amid a vast whitewash of false narratives by "domestic enemies" need to be exposed to the public, because those small potatoes will lead to bigger potatoes of deceit.

Mr. Khachigian aptly pointed out: "Each day that an investigation is delayed, staffers in the Biden White House and on the Biden and [Kamala] Harris campaigns — along with members of Mr. Biden's administration and Democratic Party operatives — might be destroying records, replacing cellphones and following Hillary Clinton's example by wiping their email servers."

The good news is that Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin, according to a Washington Times report, "is looking into the electronic signatures on the former president's last-minute pardons 'because the American people deserve answers.'"

The Senate Judiciary Committee and pardon attorney Martin need to shed a bright light on the truth for the American people. Any person who committed a crime in the cover-up of President Biden's seeming cognitive decline should be prosecuted.

One apparent crime that needs to be investigated is who, by name, directed that President Biden's autopen signature be affixed to pardons without President Biden's full knowledge?

Whoever did that violated 18 U.S.C. §912, which makes it a crime whenever anyone "pretends to be an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States," punishable by up to three years in prison. Under 18 U.S.C. §1001, anyone who "falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact" can face up to five years in prison.

In any event, we the people deserve to know what happened in our White House during the Biden administration. We have a right to know who was running the country when President Biden was so clearly not up to the task.

We have a right to know who ruled in the president's stead, so that our elected leaders can take steps to prevent it from happening again.

Five years ago, in an opinion piece titled "1775 Declaration Foreshadowed Current Need for Unity," I explained how Thomas Jefferson and his co-authors of the 1775 Declaration observed that "schemes have been form'd to excite domestic Enemies against Us."

In that context, our forefathers declared: "We are reduced to the Alternative of chusing an unconditional submission to the Tyranny of irritated Ministers, or Resistance by Force. The latter is our choice. We have counted the Cost of this Contest, & find nothing so dreadful in our Computation, as voluntary slavery."

In the past five years, we have witnessed unprecedented "schemes ... to excite domestic Enemies against Us," one of which President Trump described on May 30 in connection with the Biden White House, which so obviously lacked a real leader: "There was a lot of dishonesty in the election, as you know, of 2020. ... And when you go further out, when you see the autopen, I mean, I think the autopen is going to become one of the great scandals of all time."

The autopen scandal was initially brought to light by a nonprofit team of professional truth-seekers, formerly part of the Heritage Foundation, and now its own nonprofit entity known as "The Oversight Project: It's Your Government." In the interest of full disclosure, I am honored now to serve as a "distinguished constitutional fellow" for this team.

The Oversight Project also played a key role in forcing the recent release of the audiotapes of President Biden's interview with Robert Hur, the previously released transcript of which failed to disclose the extent of President Biden's apparent cognitive inabilities. Mr. Hur's report hardly tells the whole story, concluding only that President Biden was an "elderly man with a poor memory."

In a world that has come to elevate political narratives above the truth, we desperately need private sector teams of professionals like those in The Oversight Project, committed to what the U.S. Army Inspector General School calls "the dogged pursuit of the truth." Only the truth can restore the American people's faith, trust, and confidence in their government.

We the people deserve to know the truth. In order to understand the truth, we need to know which live bodies were behind the autopen scandal, lurking in the shadows of the Biden White House.

After all, it's our government.

Joseph E. Schmitz serves as Distinguished Constitutional Fellow for "The Oversight Project: It’s Your Government." During the 2016 presidential campaign, he served as foreign policy and national security adviser to Donald Trump. Mr. Schmitz served as Inspector General of the Department of Defense from 2002-2005. He now serves as chief legal officer of Pacem Solutions International. He graduated with distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy, earned his J.D. degree from Stanford Law School. He is the author of, "The Inspector General Handbook: Fraud, Waste, Abuse, and Other Constitutional 'Enemies, Foreign and Domestic'" (2013). Read More of His Reports — Here.