Don’t let the Biden autopen scandal become just another lame hearing



Congressional hearings can serve the public — when followed by real action. They can expose wrongdoing, shape public opinion, and force accountability. But when the hearings end and nothing follows, they become a substitute for meaningful oversight — a way to check the box and collect headlines without doing meaningful work.

That’s the routine Americans have come to expect: dramatic sound bites, viral clips, and lawmakers patting themselves on the back for sending strongly worded letters. Unless Congress breaks that habit now, the autopen scandal risks becoming just another lost opportunity.

The Biden administration may have dodged the 25th Amendment, but Congress can’t dodge its duty.

Last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing focused on the use of the autopen under President Joe Biden. The stakes couldn’t be higher. As Oversight Project board member Theo Wold put it in his testimony, the United States did not have a fully functioning president for the past four years. Biden’s longtime Senate colleagues know it — and should have testified as fact witnesses. Instead, all but two Senate Democrats — Dick Durbin of Illinois and Peter Welch of Vermont — boycotted the hearing. That includes Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose receipt of an autopenned pardon raises a glaring conflict of interest.

Senate Republicans showed up and asked the right questions. They grasped the core issue: Biden’s lack of capacity and his inability to direct subordinates. Unlike previous administrations, the Biden White House appears to have used the autopen not for convenience, but as a way to obscure who actually ran the government — skirting the 25th Amendment without invoking it.

The hearing raised serious constitutional concerns. What happens when top officials prefer an incapacitated president over triggering a process designed to protect the country? Several senators floated the idea of reforming the 25th Amendment. That’s a conversation worth having. But it means nothing without follow-through.

So what should happen now?

First, the Senate should demand every record related to the Biden administration’s use of the autopen. That includes documentation of who authorized its use and a log of every instance it was used. As Wold testified, these records exist — or their absence signals a much deeper problem. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) quickly pledged to pursue them.

Those materials fall under the Presidential Records Act and remain off-limits to the public. Trust me, we would have been in court months ago to procure their release if we could get them. Only Congress or the Trump administration can obtain them. If they stall, they’ll be complicit in the cover-up.

Second, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson must testify. Their book “Original Sin” relied on more than 200 sources. If they know something the public doesn’t, they have a moral — and potentially legal — obligation to come forward. The Senate invited them to the hearing. They declined. The next request should come in the form of a subpoena.

RELATED: Oversight Project over target: Dems seethe as facade of autopen presidency comes crashing down

  Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Third, Congress should use the same tools the January 6 select committee wielded with abandon. That includes subpoenas for documents, phone and bank records, and private communications from staffers and political operatives who helped prop up the “autopen administration.” If these individuals claim executive privilege, Trump should waive it — just as Biden did during the Jan. 6 probe.

Finally, the House had better follow through. Kentucky Republican Chairman James Comer’s promised interviews and depositions can’t be treated as political theater. They must become the backbone of a real investigation.

Accountability won’t happen unless the public demands it. Americans should track every step — or failure to act — and hold Congress to its promises. The country doesn’t need another performance. It needs answers.

The Biden administration may have dodged the 25th Amendment, but Congress can’t dodge its duty. The biggest scandal in modern American history demands more than six-minute cable news hits and clips for social media. It requires courage, subpoenas, and a willingness to pull every legal lever available.

The public has largely caught on to the ineffectiveness of “strongly worded letters” and now will have a perfect test case to judge whether Congress means business or if it’s the same old tired, do-nothing routine.

It’s time to get off X and into the trenches.

Who was president these last four years? We deserve an answer



The Biden years increasingly resemble a desperate effort to avoid invoking the 25th Amendment — no matter the cost.

That’s why the Oversight Project’s autopen investigation has captured the attention of the public, Congress, and, most importantly, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice.

President Trump didn’t hesitate: “THE AUTOPEN IS THE BIGGEST POLITICAL SCANDAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY!!!” he declared on Truth Social. He offered one caveat — the 2020 election still ranks first. I agree, even with my own involvement in uncovering the autopen scandal.

Americans knew something was wrong with Joe Biden. Whether they admitted it or not, nearly everyone sensed it. Some underestimated the severity. Others preferred denial, choosing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But beneath that uneasy consensus lay a deeper question: Who was actually running the country?

Our early disclosures from the still-ongoing autopen investigation began to answer that. When we revealed that President Biden wasn’t personally signing documents that require a sitting president’s signature, the public understood the implications immediately.

'Who was president the last four years?' isn’t just a political talking point. It’s a matter of constitutional legitimacy.

This wasn’t just about procedural shortcuts. It revealed a White House operating without a fully functional commander in chief.

The damage done during the Biden years goes far beyond bad policy. His presidency humiliated the United States on the world stage — not just as a geopolitical power, but as a constitutional republic.

We portray ourselves as the world’s most advanced democracy. We’ve even invaded other countries in the name of exporting that model. But what credibility do we have if we refuse to follow the most basic rule written into our own Constitution — namely, that we are governed by a single functioning individual known as the president?

Democrats warned that Donald Trump was an existential threat to democracy. In reality, the greater threat came from an incapacitated president being steered by unelected, unaccountable staffers behind the scenes.

After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Congress responded with common sense. Lawmakers recognized the need for a clear constitutional process to handle death or incapacity in the executive branch. This wasn’t theoretical — America had already seen four assassinated presidents in less than a century. The system had failed under Garfield, who lingered for months after being shot, and under Wilson, who suffered a debilitating stroke while in office.

The result was the 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967. It created a legal framework for what to do when a president dies, resigns, is removed, or becomes unable to perform the duties of the office. In the case of incapacity, the process requires the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to send Congress a written declaration stating that the president can no longer discharge the powers and duties of the office.

What the drafters likely didn’t imagine was that the vice president and Cabinet might choose to ignore that duty — out of cowardice, political calculation, or worse.

Why did Vice President Kamala Harris and Biden’s Cabinet spend four years sidestepping the exact constitutional process meant for this scenario? That question demands an answer.

Biden was so isolated that according to credible reports, even the secretary of the treasury couldn’t get access to him. How does a Cabinet secretary accept being blocked from seeing the president without sounding the alarm?

RELATED: The real scandal isn’t Joe Biden’s decline — it’s who hid it from you

 Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

The first step to answering those questions is to ask them.

As investigations by Ed Martin, the House, and the Senate ramp up, they must put Kamala Harris and Biden’s Cabinet under oath. Those people need to explain, clearly and publicly, why they refused to invoke the 25th Amendment.

Congress has not only the authority but the duty to demand those answers. Its oversight power reaches its peak when the subject directly informs legislative action. And no legislation ranks higher than a constitutional amendment. If the 25th Amendment failed to prevent a four-year constitutional charade, then it needs to be amended. The drafters can’t be blamed for failing to imagine a real-life “Weekend at Bernie’s.” Sometimes the Constitution needs a second draft.

“Who was president the last four years?” isn’t just a political talking point. It’s a matter of constitutional legitimacy. That question now echoes across the world. It exposes a critical vulnerability in our system — and it demands accountability.

The only path forward involves full transparency. Absent a last-minute confession from those responsible, only the Trump administration, backed by Congress, can deliver that reckoning.

When the federal government functions for years in open defiance of its founding charter, it doesn’t just cause scandal. It destroys trust. And that erosion of trust rests atop an already collapsing foundation — widespread doubts about election integrity, mass illegal immigration encouraged by the state to engineer political and demographic outcomes, and a legal system increasingly unmoored from equal protection, openly experimenting with race- and sex-based favoritism in the name of “equity.”

All of that adds up to a constitutional crisis. And unless we confront it head-on, the result won’t just be distrust. It will be disaster.

CBS News journalist admits the top story the media ignored this year was Biden's decrepitude



Kamala Harris made clear to CNN's Dana Bash in an August interview that she did not regret gaslighting the American people about President Joe Biden's worsening decrepitude. It appears that elements of the media have instead come to regret their role in maintaining the illusion.

When asked during a year-end roundtable on "Face the Nation" Sunday what the media underreported or failed to cover, CBS News' Jan Crawford answered, "Joe Biden's obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable in the televised debate."

Crawford, the network's top legal correspondent, acknowledged that the media failed to press the issue despite obvious signs of the Democratic president's worsening state.

"It's starting to emerge now that his advisers kind of managed his limitations, which has been reported in the Wall Street Journal for four years. And yet he insisted that he could still run for president," said Crawford.

Citing insights from Democratic lawmakers, donors, and aides who worked with Biden, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that elements of the president's inner circle developed a particularly insulating culture inside the White House to protect Biden during the pandemic, but "the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it."

"The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order," said the Journal. "The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public."

"We should have much more forcefully questioned whether he was fit for office for another four years, which could have led to a primary for the Democrats," said Crawford. "It could have changed the scope of the entire election."

'This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever.'

Crawford is hardly the first to admit the media's discrediting failure to properly report on Biden's decline.

Former CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza recently admitted that as a reporter, he "should have pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden's mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline."

Some reporters in the White House press pool anonymously admitted to CNN that they refrained from speaking truth to power for fear of "the blowback from pursuing such reports, especially from the White House and Democrats."

Prior to Biden's abysmal performance at his June 27 debate with President-elect Donald Trump, the media appeared resolved to recycle the talking points advanced by Attorney General Merrick Garland, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Gen. Mark Milley, and other fellow travelers with a stake in the maintenance of the illusion, namely that the 82-year-old Democrat was capable, competent, and ready to lead the world's pre-eminent superpower for another four years.

Of course, maintaining the illusion required discounting or glossing over Biden's difficulty completing sentences; struggles to stay upright; heavy reliance on cue cards; repetition of the same debunked anecdote nearly word for word, in short succession; confusing the dead with the living, his sister for his wife, and the names of disparate nations; uncertainty about the current year; apparent need to spend roughly 40% of his presidency out of office; and his unintentional international provocations.

MSNBC talking head Joe Scarborough was apparently more than happy to engage in such make-believe, stating in March, "I've said it for years now, he's cogent. But I undersold it when I said he was cogent. He's far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he's better than he's ever been, intellectually, analytically, because he's been around for 50 years."

"Start your tape right now because I'm about to tell you the truth," continued Scarborough. 'And eff you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever."

Noah Berlatsky similarly embarrassed himself by declaring in a July 2023 Independent article, "There's virtually no evidence that Biden is in cognitive decline, and a lot of evidence — including the successful debt ceiling negotiations — that he remains fully able to do his job."

Prior to leaving CNN, Oliver Darcy cast doubt on suggestions that Biden's mental acuity was slipping.

Brian Tyler Cohen, a leftist podcaster who interviewed Biden in February 2022, reassured MSNBC readers in September 2023, "We don't have to guess whether Biden is capable of doing the job, because he's quite literally already doing it — and I'd argue doing it more effectively than any other president in modern American history."

Robert Costa, CBS News' chief election and campaign correspondent, doubled down on the competency narrative in response to Crawford's admission Sunday, telling the panel, "President Biden has said repeatedly he was sick during the debate June 27 in Atlanta, and he's always been fine and he leaves fine. That is his position, the position of many of his top aides as well, even though there is that reporting."

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