Former President Joe Biden has slammed President Donald Trump‘s investigation into him and his aides’ alleged cover-up of his cognitive decline as a “distraction.”
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,” Biden told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
Biden added that the investigation, announced Wednesday evening by Trump through presidential memorandum, along with travel restrictions on foreign nationals from countries considered to pose national security threats, is “nothing more than a distraction” by Trump and congressional Republicans “who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs such as Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.”
Trump’s investigation, to be led by White House counsel David Warrington in coordination with Attorney General Pam Bondi, is to uncover whether “certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the President,” according to the memorandum.
The investigation will also specifically look at whether Biden’s aides conspired to make false statements about the then-president’s capabilities and to dismiss recorded videos of his cognitive inability as fake.
“The Counsel to the President shall also investigate, in consultation with the Attorney General and the head of any other relevant agency, the circumstances surrounding Biden’s supposed execution of numerous executive actions during his final years in office,” the memorandum stated. “This investigation shall address: (i) the policy documents for which the autopen was used, including clemency grants, Executive Orders, Presidential memoranda, or other Presidential policy decisions; and (ii) who directed that the President’s signature be affixed.”
Trump’s investigation will supplement a separate Justice Department inquiry by Ed Martin into whether Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.”
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Both House and Senate Republicans have launched their own investigations into Biden’s autopen use and whether he was in charge during his presidency, including House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), who is asking former Biden aides and his White House physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, to sit for transcribed interviews for him and other Oversight lawmakers.
Biden’s cognitive decline is under renewed scrutiny after the publication last month of Original Sin, a book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, which reports on how Biden aides protected and shielded the former president from the public and even his own Cabinet members.
