Having thoroughly humiliated himself over the bogus and years long Biden Crime Family™ investigation, Rep. Jamie Comer has now established that his nitwittery is infinite, changing horses to pursue the Great Autopen Caper of 2024-25, leaving the American public breathless with anticipation for additional comedy gold.
Comer, R-TheFrankfortLoop, promoted continuously as the next governor of this great Commonwealth, and God save it, is at it again as chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, a position he has managed to abuse for going on three years now. This go-round he’s desperately trying to show that former President Joe Biden was so addled by the end of his term in January that he couldn’t tell a hog from a handsaw. As a result, his staff, working surreptitiously to hide the truth from the American public, actually ran the White House for lord knows how long.
This scourge manifested itself in the Great Autopen Caper of 2024-25. You see, it is Jamie’s theory, disclosed in a committee report issued in late October, titled “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House,” that Biden was so far around the bend mentally that the staff issued, among other things, a series of pardons without the then president’s imprimatur, using a device known as an Autopen to attach his signature to the documents without his knowledge.
In Jamie’s world, this has rendered these pardons and other official acts null and void.
“The Biden Autopen Presidency will go down as one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history,’’ Comer said in a statement. “As Americans saw President Biden’s decline with their own eyes, Biden’s inner circle sought to deceive the public, cover-up his decline, and took unauthorized executive actions with the autopen that are now invalid.”
Most of what he said was, of course, baloney. But, as you can imagine, it didn’t take much to convince that erudite leader of the free world, President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump, that an opportunity was being presented to him on a silver platter to put the screws to Biden, who, by the way, defeated him by 7 million, count ‘em, 7 million, votes in his failed bid for re-election in 2020.
On Dec. 2, El Presidente wrote on Truth Social, “Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts, signed by Order of the now infamous and unauthorized ‘AUTOPEN,’ within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect. Anyone receiving ‘Pardons,’ ‘Commutations,’ or any other Legal Document so signed, please be advised that said Document has been fully and completely terminated, and is of no Legal effect.”
As noted by the Poynter Institute, that verbal command is, as is true with so much of what Trump says nowadays, hogwash. “The Constitution doesn’t require presidents to directly sign pardons. Using a mechanical device for signatures is not prohibited and there is no constitutional mechanism for overturning pardons…”
So there’s that. But Jamie, whose relationship with the Constitution rests on unsteady ground and who is much more devoted to the voice of his master, the Lord of Mar-a-Lago, than a piece of paper is just pleased like all get-out that DJT approves.
“I applaud President Trump for deeming President Biden’s autopen actions null and void,” Comer said in a statement. “As Americans witnessed President Biden’s decline with their own eyes, Biden’s inner circle sought to deceive the public, conceal his condition, and take unauthorized executive actions using the autopen—actions that are now invalid.”
Good lord, what a maroon.
Let’s start with the obvious – President Biden was 82 in the final year of his term and was experiencing a decline in mental agility that can be attributed to a sign of old age. He certainly shouldn’t have sought a second term, which he initially did before withdrawing, given that his mental capacity would most certainly decline further by the time he was 86 and preparing to leave office had he been re-elected.
That doesn’t mean he was a gibbering imbecile who couldn’t dress himself, as portrayed by Comer and his henchmen, during the waning days of his administration. He delivered an hour-and-seven-minute State of the Union address on March 7, 2024, a speech that was no better or no worse than the snoozefests delivered by any of his predecessors. He met with foreign dignitaries and carried out the usual White House activities, though slowed by the weight of age.
It didn’t mean he was non compos mentis who thought he was Napoleon all of a sudden. It meant that age had caught up with him, that his mental status wasn’t going to improve and it was time to give the job to someone younger. There were understandable concerns about his age even before a faltering debate appearance against Trump on June 27, 2024.
It works for Comer’s purposes to portray Biden as a slobbering idiot and that his senior staff engaged in a cover-up of his condition. That fails to recognize that presidential staffs before and since Biden’s generally operate in that fashion to help maintain public confidence in the administration. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke during his second term and the nation was left unaware that his wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, ran the joint. John Ehrlichman, who served as domestic policy advisor to Richard Nixon, once said there were periods where orders emanating from the Oval Office were ignored if they came after 4 pm because it meant the old man was in his cups.
Ronald Reagan left office at age 77 already exhibiting signs of the dementia that would ultimately overtake him.
Apparently the conclusions reached by Comer and the House Oversight staff are based purely on conjecture. As the report reads, former members of Biden’s senior staff, interrogated by the committee staff, “denie(d) not only that his cognitive decline was on full display in his 2024 debate with President Trump, but that the public was ever even concerned about cognitive decline. In their view, public concern about Biden’s debate performance was about his ‘bad cold’ and more general feelings about potential limitations due to his advanced age.’’
Whether their analysis was accurate or not, the interviews revealed that no one close to Biden in the Oval Office considered him gaga. And, as far as is known, Biden hasn’t stepped forward to say the presidential actions in question were performed without his approval.
Comer and the committee staff offered no hard proof that the Autopen was used without his knowledge and consent.
In a minority report, committee Democrats maintain, “Over the course of the Republicans’ investigation, 14 former White House officials and aides provided nearly 60 hours of testimony. Their consistent, firsthand accounts uniformly contradict Republican claims and portray President Biden as fully engaged and capable throughout his presidency. Moreover, the autopen ‘scandal’ manufactured by Chairman Comer and House Republicans proved to be nothing more than a feeble attempt to attack the legitimacy of President Biden’s policies — a pretext to invalidate executive actions by President Biden, including valid pardons issued pursuant to his constitutional authority.
“After extensive witness interviews and numerous media appearances, the Majority has produced no credible evidence to substantiate his assertions, demonstrating once again his preference for partisanship over genuine oversight.’’
And that’s the real point. With all that’s going on in this country, an excruciating trade war, Justice Department investigations into Trump’s political enemies ordered by Trump himself, the dispatch of the military to American cities, attacks on American universities, pardons of questionable individuals, including the former president of Honduras who was convicted of narcotrafficking, and the horror being bestowed on the immigrant population, legal and illegal, Comer has chosen to devote tax dollars and legislative time to investigate Joe Biden, now suffering from cancer, who hasn’t been engaged in public affairs for almost a year, and the use of an Autopen, which is perfectly legal in signing documents.
You gotta say one thing about the boy, his priorities sure are in the right place. He looked dumb after the Biden influence peddling probe crashed and burned last year. He looks even dumber now.
Whatever else you might say about Biden, and there was good and bad, he never engaged in babbling, often incoherent, racist rants that demeaned his own constituents, divided the country, leered at his press secretary and attracted legitimate questions about his sanity.
By the way, Donald James Trump will turn 82 in the final year of his presidency, the same age Biden was in the last year of his administration.