Connect with us

International

Biden autopen scandal: Did unelected aides commit fraud during his final days in office?

Published

6 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Jarrett Stepman

Biden administration aides signed pardons and executive orders by autopen in the president’s absence, which Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said could render them ‘null and void.’

The so-called autopen scandal appears to be getting worse for former President Joe Biden as more information comes to light.

Biden, some of his former staffers, and a handful of thought leaders in the Democratic Party have attempted to triage the message about the inner workings of the previous presidential administration. But tangible evidence is mounting that it was effectively run like a kind of politburo.

The New York Times released an interesting report Sunday afternoon that included a short interview with Biden saying he made decisions on clemency that were carried out with an autopen. In the final month of his presidency, Biden pardoned a number of high-profile people and granted clemency to an additional 1,500.

High-profile examples included his son, Hunter Biden, members of the January 6 committee, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley.

“Everybody knows how vindictive [President Donald Trump] is, so we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now,” Biden said in the Times interview. “I consciously made all those decisions.”

Some of the people on the 1,500-person list were violent criminals, including virtually everyone on death row.

Biden insisted that he was “conscious” of all his administration’s decisions (a contention not helped by his rambling responses).

But snippets from the Times’ report calls that claim into question.

On Biden’s last day in office Biden’s Chief of Staff Jeff Zients gave approval to use the autopen in the cases of Fauci and Milley, according to the Times.

In addition, the Times reported that Biden’s staff who drafted the blubs for acts of clemency admitted that they weren’t in the room with the president when approval for signing them was made.

Whatever the intent of Biden or this report, it certainly didn’t clear up the suspicion that Biden wasn’t mentally competent to make decisions and that his staff and perhaps other people were essentially usurping executive power they didn’t have.

When you combine that with the recent decision by Biden’s White House doctor to continually plead the Fifth Amendment to remain silent at a recent closed-door House hearing and former first lady Jill Biden’s Chief of Staff Anthony Bernal suddenly becoming uncooperative with the autopen investigation, it certainly raises suspicion.

And that’s a potentially enormous scandal, even bigger than the media’s cover-up of the president’s health. Not only was the country put in danger with an out-to-lunch commander in chief, but members of his staff may have been wielding unconstitutional powers on his behalf.

Trump said to reporters Monday that the autopen scandal may be one of the biggest in American history, and he may be correct.

It’s a big stinking deal, to paraphrase Biden in his more lucid days.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote on X that “as a legal matter, that ANY pardon Biden did not ‘individually approve’ is NULL & VOID.”

Cruz may have come to this conclusion based on the testimony of a witness at a recent Senate hearing on the autopen use and abuse. Cruz asked Theodore Wold, a visiting fellow for law and technology policy at The Heritage Foundation, whether an executive order signed by a staffer who autopen signs it without the president’s knowledge is legally binding.

Wold answered, “No.”

Unfortunately, there is very little precedent here to rely on to determine what the status of those pardons is. So, this may end up being more of a political battle than a legal dilemma.

I suspect this is why close associates of Biden are becoming closed lipped. This is about more than just Biden’s legacy or the media’s shame. It’s about whether Biden’s pardons are legally binding. It’s about whether members of the Biden White House misused their power. Did they commit fraud?

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., who is the chairman of a Senate committee looking into the autopen use, suggested that’s a possibility.

One way or another, the American people deserve answers.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal.

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

International

Matt Walsh slams Trump administration’s move to bury Epstein sex trafficking scandal

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘We can’t drop it. We can’t move on. Because what we want is justice. We have a deep desire for justice,’ Matt Walsh explained.

Matt Walsh minced no words as he criticized the Trump administration’s stunning reversal in its messaging surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s client list.

“There’s simply no getting around the massive craterlike hole that the administration dug for itself here,” Walsh said during his most recent podcast. The Trump administration is “just telling us to shut up, essentially.”

“Millions of Americans are not satisfied with what we’ve been told,” Walsh declared. “And we shouldn’t be, because it’s been contradictory and insulting to our intelligence every step of the way.”

“This is what happens when people are deceived and strung along for years, only to be told that they’re not entitled to any kind of transparency whatsoever,” he said. “People are not just going to move on with their lives, no matter how badly you want them to, and there’s a reason for that.”

“I want to make this very clear to those on the right, including the President himself who are telling us to just drop the subject and move on,” Walsh said.

“We can’t drop it. We can’t move on. Because what we want is justice. We have a deep desire for justice.” he explained, “And we can see how the corrupt and the powerful are never held accountable.”

He continued:

We can look at our cities and see violent criminals running rampant in the streets. Also not held accountable.

We want these evil doers to be punished.

We want the innocent to be defended.

We want justice. It’s one of the most basic and most honorable of all human desires.

We want to see that justice is done.

Turning his attention back to the Epstein scandal, Walsh said, “We want to know who else was in those awful videos that Pam Bondi told us about, and we want those people to be dragged in front of us, weeping and begging for mercy.”

“We want them exposed and humiliated and shamed and punished in the harshest and most painful way. Because that’s justice, and we’re not going to drop the subject until we get it,” he promised.

“In other words, don’t give us any more excuses from bureaucrats on Fox News. Don’t give us any more stonewalling and doublespeak,” he demanded. “We’ve seen more than enough of that in this case and so many others.”

“Instead, for a change,” Walsh said, “give us something we’re not used to seeing from the federal government and the DOJ: Give us justice.”

Walsh was reacting to the DOJ’s announcement last week that there is no Epstein “client list” and that “no further disclosure is warranted,” immediately igniting a firestorm of criticism from the grassroots MAGA movement and conservative pundits.

“This EPSTEIN AFFAIR is NOT going away!” General Michael Flynn declared on X. “This has to change and quickly.”

“Until this case is fully revealed, every elite institution carries a stench they can’t wash off,” Glenn Beck said.

“The Epstein case isn’t over. It’s the Rosetta Stone of public trust,” Beck said. “And if we don’t get to the bottom of it, we’ll never restore what’s already been lost.”

“The justice department and the FBI are irredeemably compromised and corrupted,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton averred in a podcast discussion with former Trump confidant Steve Bannon.

Trump and his administration had clearly not read the room before attempting to deflect attention away from the Epstein scandal but has since recalibrated its public stance.

“Just got off the phone with top federal law enforcement contact. The change in approach to Epstein has been dramatic,” conservative commentator Benny Johnson wrote on X. “Expect more disclosures. Some very powerful people inside Admin are now pushing for a Special Counsel and a full press briefing on Epstein findings.”

“This is why when you feel strongly about something you should never shut the f— up. Never underestimate the power of X,” said Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom. “Kudos to the Trump admin (at least via its (spokesperson) today) for signaling a change in stance to be responsive to the public.”

“Obviously, the next few months will tell the final tale, but it’s very heartening to have a government that feels like it really keeps its nose to our grindstone,” Benz added.

Continue Reading

COVID-19

Sen. Rand Paul: ‘I am officially re-referring Dr. Fauci to the DOJ’

Published on

Fr0m LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘Perjury is a crime,’ Sen. Rand Paul declared on X. ‘And Fauci must be held accountable.’

Sen. Rand Paul announced Monday that he is again pressuring the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch a criminal probe of Dr. Anthony Fauci after The New York Times revealed his 11th-hour pardon by the Biden administration is likely invalid.

“Today, I will reissue my criminal referral of Anthony Fauci to Trump DOJ!” declared Paul, later adding, “Perjury is a crime. And Fauci must be held accountable.”

By late in the afternoon on Monday, the Kentucky senator had composed a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi citing the times he believed Fauci had lied under oath during congressional hearings and urging the DOJ to finally investigate Fauci.

“In July 2023, I referred Dr. Anthony Fauci to the Department of Justice for lying under oath to Congress. His own emails directly contradicted his sworn testimony,” Paul wrote X.

“NYT reports Fauci was quietly pardoned by an autopen, operated by Biden’s staff. If the President didn’t authorize this pardon personally, then the Department has a duty to investigate and prosecute as it would any ordinary citizen,” Paul said.

“Fauci has been sainted by the extremist Left, but it doesn’t erase his lying before Congress,” Paul said. “I am officially re-referring Dr. Fauci to the DOJ.”

Sen. Paul concluded his letter to Bondi by explaining that his autopen pardon is now seen to be illegitimate:

On January 19, 2025, Dr. Fauci was issued a full and unconditional pardon for any offenses that he may have committed or taken part in since 2014. Dr. Fauci was included among a group of individuals granted unprecedented preemptive pardons on President Joe Biden’s final day in office. However, new information has revealed that these pardons were executed via autopen, with no documented confirmation that the President personally reviewed or approved each individual grant of clemency.

According to reports, White House staff authorized the use of the autopen to issue the clemency documents. This raises serious constitutional and legal concerns about the legitimacy of Dr. Fauci’s Pardon.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the constant reliance on the autopen by the Biden administration is “one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50 to 100 years.”

“I guarantee (Biden) knew nothing about what he was signing,” Trump asserted.

Fauci’s mendacious relationship with Congress 

The senator from the Bluegrass State and Dr. Fauci have long had a combative relationship.

In 2021, Sen. Paul alleged that Fauci, who then served as director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and as medical adviser to former President Joe Biden, “lied to Congress” when he claimed that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), of which the NIAID is a part, was not funding and had never funded “gain-of-function” research in Wuhan, China.

Then in 2023, Paul again filed a criminal referral to the DOJ against the White House COVID czar for lying to Congress about his role in subsidizing controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research that was suspected of contributing to the COVID outbreak.

“We have him dead to rights, the problem is this: we have Merrick Garland who I think is a pure rank partisan,” Paul said at the time. “I don’t think he’ll ever be prosecuted. We also have a Democrat Party that is happy to have paid him more than the president, more than any president makes and he actually got a million dollars from a private foundation while he was still a public servant. Everything about this is rotten to the core and if we don’t bring him to justice we’ll never get the control we need on this type of research to try and prevent it from happening again.”

Paul has said multiple times that Dr. Fauci should “go to prison” for lying to Congress.

Continue Reading

Trending

X