D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is disputing media claims that the Department of Justice has quietly shut down its inquiry into former President Joe Bidens reliance on an autopen to execute official presidential acts.
According to One America News, unnamed sources told CBS News that federal prosecutors had concluded there was no viable legal theory on which to base criminal charges and that the matter never advanced to a grand jury. The New York Times likewise reported that the probe had been formally closed, signaling what many in the corporate press framed as the end of a politically charged controversy over Bidens fitness and the legitimacy of his presidential paperwork.
Pirro, however, has publicly suggested that the story is not over. She indicated that certain lines of inquiry tied to the autopen issue may still be active, though she declined to specify which aspects of the review remain under scrutiny.
If the reported closure holds, it would cap a sweeping effort by the Trump administration to challenge a wide array of Biden-era executive actions and pardons on the basis of alleged signature fraud. The core question has never been the mere use of an autopen a device long accepted for routine presidential business but whether it was deployed while Biden was mentally competent to authorize the decisions it purported to reflect.
Ed Martin, a former high-ranking Justice Department official who served as Pardon Attorney, emerged as a key advocate for examining Bidens autopen practices. He acknowledged that autopen signatures are generally legal, but argued that the Biden White Houses pattern of use demanded investigation to ensure that the signatures were authorized by a competent president.
The controversy intensified in Bidens final days in office, when he unleashed a wave of clemency actions that stunned even seasoned observers of presidential power. A significant driver of the investigation was this last-minute flurry of pardons for family members and high-profile allies, many of which critics argued were signed via autopen while Biden was unfit to make such decisions.
By the time he left office, Biden had become the president with the highest total number of clemency acts on record. More than half of the 4,245 pardons issued by his administration were granted in the final month of his single term, raising obvious questions about who was truly in charge.
Among the most controversial of those pardons was the one granted to his son, Hunter Biden. Unlike many other beneficiaries, Hunter had already been convicted of federal gun charges in Delaware and had pleaded guilty to tax charges in California, yet his pardon was a full and unconditional grant covering all federal offenses committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.
Concerned that the combination of Bidens visible cognitive decline and the heavy reliance on an autopen undermined the legitimacy of these actions, President Trump ordered a formal investigation in June. In a Presidential Memorandum, he warned, The combined nature of Bidens documented cognitive decline and the repeated use of an autopen raises serious concerns about the legitimacy of his actions.
Biden, for his part, dismissed the entire controversy as a partisan stunt. At the time, he labeled the allegations nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans.
Seeking to project authority and control, Biden insisted that he alone had made the key decisions of his presidency. Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency, he said. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didnt is ridiculous and false.
Outside the administration, conservative watchdogs moved to test those assurances against the documentary record. The Oversight Project, a right-leaning investigative group, devoted extensive resources to reviewing more than 27,000 Biden-era documents and reported that many signatures were perfect matches to two templates they labeled Autopen A and Autopen B.
Congressional investigators followed that trail into the West Wing. Several former Biden aides were subpoenaed to testify before lawmakers, as part of a broader probe into who authorized the autopens use and under what conditions it was deployed.
In total, 14 former Biden administration officials and aides were drawn into the inquiry, underscoring how deeply the autopen issue had penetrated the upper echelons of the previous White House. Their testimony, Republicans argued, would help determine whether Bidens inner circle had effectively governed in his name while shielding the public from the true state of his health.
Trump, never one to miss a symbolic opportunity, also used the controversy to make a pointed statement about presidential accountability. He went so far as to display a photograph of the autopen device signing Bidens name in his Presidential Walk of Fame in the East Wing of the White House, a visual reminder of what he has called the Biden Autopen Presidency.
Beyond symbolism, the Trump administration took concrete steps to roll back Bidens paper trail. Trump terminated all executive orders that had been signed with the autopen under the Biden administration, asserting that they lacked the constitutional legitimacy of a presidents own hand.
The House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), amplified those concerns in a 93-page report titled The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House. The report accused Bidens inner circle, including his physician, of orchestrating a coordinated cover-up of his deteriorating mental and physical condition while he remained in office.
Faced with the cognitive decline of President Joe Biden, White House aides at the direction of the inner circle hid the truth about the former presidents condition and fitness for office, the report stated. For conservatives, that finding reinforced long-standing fears that an unelected cadre of advisers had effectively been running the country while the nominal commander-in-chief struggled to perform basic duties.
Even if the DOJs criminal investigation has indeed reached a dead end, the political and administrative fallout has been substantial. The Trump administration has leveraged the signature fraud narrative to justify sweeping reversals of Biden-era policy, arguing that actions taken under questionable authority should not bind a new, duly elected president.
Trump has issued executive orders declaring dozens of Biden regulations and pardons null and void on the basis of the autopen findings, a bold maneuver that sidesteps the often slow and cumbersome repeal process mandated by the Administrative Procedure Act. Legal analysts caution that these unilateral declarations will face steep challenges in federal court, where the APA and Supreme Court precedent typically shield established rules and pardons from easy reversal.
Yet even critics concede that the strategy has already had a tangible effect. By casting doubt on the legitimacy of Bidens signatures and spotlighting the question of presidential competence, the Trump administration has gained crucial leverage to stall, weaken, or block key elements of the prior administrations agenda a development that many conservatives see as a necessary corrective after four years of governance they view as both radical in policy and dubious in process.
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