The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday released a sweeping report finding that senior aides to former President Joe Biden exercised presidential powers without his knowledge or consent, aiding in his signing of executive actions, directing policy, and managing his public appearances as his cognitive decline worsened.
The 90-page report, “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House,” accuses Biden’s inner circle of running the government in his stead and concealing his medical deterioration through stage-managed appearances and manipulated decision processes. Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said the findings raise “constitutional and criminal concerns” about the validity of executive actions taken between 2021 and the end of his term in office.
“Executive actions performed by Biden White House staff and signed by autopen are null and void,” Comer said in a statement. “Biden’s aides misled the American people and hijacked the powers of the presidency.”
Unauthorized decisions and misuse of the autopen
The committee says aides routinely used the presidential autopen, a mechanical signature device, to execute official actions without proof of Biden’s approval. However, the problem became clear to the committee after it discovered that 32 of 51 clemency warrants were signed using digital copies of his signature, without any contemporaneous documentation linking Biden to the decisions, thereby leaving no evidence to show the president willingly agreed to sign those warrants.
A Jan. 19 episode detailed in the report describes a “game of telephone” in which chief of staff Jeff Zients authorized the autopen for a final batch of pardons, including for his son Hunter Biden and four other family members, as well as Anthony Fauci, and Gen. Mark Milley, based only on secondhand accounts of a meeting he never attended. An aide emailed approval from Zients’s account, initialed “JZ,” without confirming with Biden directly, according to the report.
The report further cites testimony that then-Staff Secretary Neera Tanden saw the president only “every six to eight weeks,” leaving little oversight of official signatures. Investigators concluded there was no proper chain of custody for decision memos and that even residence staff had access to presidential materials.
The report’s authors say these lapses “compromised the constitutional chain of command” and call into question whether dozens of executive orders, pardons, and agency directives issued in Biden’s name remain legally valid.
Financial conflicts and medical cover-up
The report singles out former White House physician Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s longtime doctor, noting that he had “business dealings with and financial connections to President Biden’s family.” Investigators said those ties, combined with political incentives to keep Biden viable for reelection, created “a motive to conceal the president’s decline while running the government in his stead.”
According to testimony cited in the report, senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn opposed a cognitive exam despite public calls for one. Donilon allegedly stood to make up to $8 million in consulting bonuses tied to Biden’s 2024 campaign, the report alleges, while Dunn told the committee the president’s top advisers reached a consensus to avoid any medical testing that could damage his reelection prospects.
Former chief of staff Jeff Zients corroborated that consensus and later requested a full cognitive workup, but only after Biden’s faltering debate performance against then-candidate Donald Trump in June 2024. O’Connor, Dunn, and Donilon each refused to answer certain questions under oath; O’Connor, Annie Tomasini, and Anthony Bernal all invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Stage-management and public deception
The report also echoes what became a common refrain against the former president: concern about his public appearance, which is highlighted as one of the reasons why concerns about Biden’s cognitive decline became such a mainstream fascination. The report repeatedly describes a “meticulously stage-managed” presidency.
“These steps ranged from addressing President Biden’s makeup, clothing, schedule, the number of steps President Biden could walk or climb, the amount of time President Biden needed to read and to spend with his family,” the report states. It also cites media reports that Hollywood producers Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg were enlisted to coach Biden on voice delivery and body language for the 2024 State of the Union and debate appearances.
Former communications aides described a system of pre-scripted press cards, controlled reporter questions, and constant teleprompter use, even at small events, to maintain an image of command. Meanwhile, donors privately expressed alarm at Biden’s visible frailty, with one telling Zients the president’s reliance on a teleprompter at a private fundraiser was concerning.
Constitutional implications and next steps
Comer has referred O’Connor, Tomasini, and Bernal to the Justice Department for further review and asked the D.C. Board of Medicine to examine O’Connor’s conduct. He also urged a full DOJ audit of all executive actions taken during Biden’s tenure to determine their legality.
Legal experts who spoke to the Washington Examiner said it could be an uphill battle to undo actions taken during Biden’s first term, aside from reversing executive orders, many of which Trump did during his first week back in the Oval Office. Additionally, the president’s ability to pardon and commute sentences for individuals has routinely been held as a sacred tradition, and no subsequent president has ever undone pardons or commutations by their predecessors.
Notably, the report did not directly address whether the DOJ should revise its guidance on handling executive actions through the autopen. A 2005 DOJ memo found that presidents can use the autopen for official documents, though it was previously rarely used by presidents until former President Barack Obama used it to sign legislation in 2011 while he was abroad on a trip.
Democrats on the panel released their own report that sought to dismiss the Republican-led report as partisan conjecture, saying the evidence does not show Biden’s staff acted without authority. Biden himself has rejected claims that he was unaware of his administration’s decisions, claiming earlier this year that he was deeply involved in the pardon process.
BIDEN’S CHIEF OF STAFF GAVE MOST DAMNING TESTIMONY YET IN AUTOPEN PROBE
“I made the decisions during my presidency — the pardons, the orders, the proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” Biden said at the time.
The DOJ has not indicated whether it will act on the committee’s referrals.
