House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer stated that his investigation into President Joe Biden’s alleged mental decline could potentially be used to challenge and overturn some of Biden’s pardons or executive orders.
Comer argues that Biden’s senior staff have failed to demonstrate that the president was fully aware of what he was signing, amid growing concerns about his cognitive fitness, Just the News reports.
“It’s questionable whether or not it’s legal to use an autopen on a legal document, but what’s not questionable is if the President of the United States had no idea what was being signed with using the autopen in his name,” Comer told the Just the News, No Noise TV show on Friday. “Then, you know, that’s not legal.”
Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, expressed his belief that the evidence uncovered in his investigation could also be used to challenge the validity of some of President Biden’s clemency actions—particularly in light of Biden’s poor performance during the contentious summer 2024 presidential debate, which fueled concerns about his mental fitness.
“I think at the end of the day, our investigation … could be used as evidence in trying to overturn some of those pardons and some of the executive orders, because the autopen was used so frequently … after that debate,” said Comer.
Former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told Just the News in March that legal challenges to Biden’s use of the autopen would almost certainly be decided in the courts.
“They will end up in court, and there are going to be two issues. One, the nature of what was signed – was it a pardon, or was it a bill from Congress, for example. And second, the nature of the autopen,” he said.
“First, the nature of what’s signed. If it was a bill, here’s what the Constitution says: ‘If he approves, he shall sign it.’ So it says, ‘sign it.’ Sign it. So an autopen would raise a real problem if he signed it by autopen, which is not a real signature,” Dershowitz said of bill signed by the president.
Of pardons, the legal scholar said the Constitution does not require a signature, but “it will still raise the issue: Did he actually pardon? Or did somebody else just write the signature without really getting approval from President Biden? You know, we know there were mental health issues there. So there the issue will be: Did he approve the pardon?”
