President Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into whether the “mental decline” of Joe Biden led to his staff covering up his health issues.
While Trump has so far remained silent on Elon Musk’s takedown of his “Big, Beautiful Bill,” he is now on the hunt to discover “who ran the United States while President Biden was in office.”
Trump’s memorandum, released on Wednesday, is an extension of the president’s seeming obsession with Biden’s possible use of an autopen to sign documents, including pardons. Trump wants to determine whether the use of an automated signature might impact the “legality and validity of numerous executive actions undertaken in Biden’s name.”
“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” writes Trump in the memo.
“Biden’s cognitive issues and apparent mental decline during his Presidency were even ‘worse’ in private, and those closest to him ‘tried to hide it’ from the public,” he continues.
The document also claims that Biden’s advisors intentionally limited his time in front of the media and wrote scripts for his “conversations with lawmakers, government officials, and donors, all to cover up his inability to discharge his duties.”
Trump goes on to accuse Biden’s aides of “abusing the power of Presidential signatures” by using an autopen, a digital device that automates a person’s signature, in an attempt to “conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority.”
Article II establishes the power given directly to the president.
Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House counsel David Warrington to oversee the investigation.
One specific goal of the investigation will be to uncover “any agreements between Biden’s aides to cooperatively and falsely deem recorded videos of the President’s cognitive inability as fake.”
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about the difference in presidential signatures on some of Biden’s pardons during his time in office.
“The President is making a good point when he discusses the usage of the autopen.“ Leavitt said. ”Who was running the country for the past four years?"
Biden, who last month announced he has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, “issued more pardons and commutations” than any administration in United States history, according to the new memorandum.
The document calls into question whether Biden was even aware of the actions being undertaken in his name—especially those that were authorized via autopen versus his actual signature.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Joe Biden for comment.
In 2005, President George W. Bush’s Justice Department declared that an autopen could be used legally to sign bills into law. Trump has stated he only uses an autopen “for very unimportant papers.”
