President Donald Trump is putting the "scandal" of former President Joe Biden's autopen executive actions up among the "biggest, ever."
"The Biden autopen scandal is big, not as big as the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, or the rigged 2020 presidential election, but, nevertheless, one of the biggest, ever!!!" Trump wrote Monday morning on Truth Social.
The House Oversight Committee continues to dig into "who was running the White House" as Biden was in his final months as president, struggling with cognitive decline, unreported metastasizing cancer from his prostate to the bone, and issuing mass executive actions and pardons – including his own staff and family.
"The American people deserve to know who was actually calling the shots in the Biden White House, because it wasn't Joe Biden," Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said. "His mental decline was obvious to anyone paying attention.
"But instead of being honest, the Biden administration, Democrats in Congress, and the legacy media lied and covered it up. They gaslit the American people while propping up a man who was unfit to lead."
While Biden was allegedly unfit to perform his duties, several high-level aides are reported to have been operating with unchecked authority, according to the committee.
"Some of these witnesses, who are closest to Biden, have invoked the Fifth Amendment, refusing to testify willingly, attempting to delay their appearance before the Committee, and hiding the truth from the American people," the House Oversight website reads.
The latest reports have Biden aides questioning the mass actions and pardons — and even whether Biden himself knew about them.
In a blanket statement earlier this summer, Biden effectively absolved potential wrongdoing with the claim he made all the decisions, even if the autopen was ultimately what signed the documents.
"Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency," Biden's statement read. "I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false."
Senior Biden administration officials expressed unease over the former president's sweeping clemency drive and reliance on an autopen to sign pardons and commutations in his final months in office, internal emails showed, Axios reported Saturday. After Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden in December 2024, aides scrambled to assemble additional lists of recipients, often bypassing Justice Department review.
The result was a historic 4,245 clemency grants, with more than 95% issued in the last three and a half months of his presidency, including 2,490 commutations announced just three days before leaving office.
Critics inside the DOJ, including ethics attorney Bradley Weinsheimer, who later resigned, warned that some cases involved violent offenders, despite White House claims that the effort focused on nonviolent drug convictions.
Records indicate White House chief of staff Jeff Zients authorized use of the autopen for mass clemency orders, fueling concerns among staff over whether Biden personally approved each action. The House Oversight Committee plans to hear testimony from Zients on Sept. 18 about the clemency process and the extent of the autopen's use.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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