This is potentially the biggest legal can of worms ever opened in the United States

 

PJ Media asks the hard question, and makes a case for it.

The Biden presidency might have been the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the American people. A shocking investigation by the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project has revealed that virtually every document bearing Joe Biden's signature during his presidency was signed by an autopen — except for one.

What makes this revelation particularly damning is that the only document confirmed to have Biden's actual signature was his letter announcing his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race.

. . .

The use of the presidential autopen dates back to the 1950s, and there's been much debate about its legality. In 2013, Barack Obama became the first president to sign a bill into law using an autopen. He was vacationing in Hawaii at the time. His office relied on a 30-page memo from President George W. Bush's legal team asserting that the president's presence was not required as long as said president had authorized the signature. 

What's not clear, in the case of Biden, is who was running the autopen and whether Biden was aware it was happening. 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is demanding that the Department of Justice investigate whether Biden's obvious cognitive decline allowed unelected bureaucrats to essentially run the government without presidential oversight. If this is true — and let's be honest, all signs point to yes — every executive order, every pardon, and every official action taken under Biden's name could be constitutionally void.

There's more at the link.

This is potentially the biggest legal can of worms ever opened in the United States.  In theory, it could mean that every act, proclamation, executive order, etc. that was not signed in person by President Biden might have been "signed" - i.e. the autopen might have been controlled by - another person entirely, whether or not they had authorization to do so.  If they did, where is that authorization, for every single occasion on which they did so?  If they did not, they committed a crime by signing an invalid document into law.

What about people arrested and/or convicted and/or imprisoned for breaking a law that may not have been validly signed?  What about the funds expended by the government in response to a potentially unlawfully signed document?  Were they validly spent, or do they now have to be recovered - not to mention that most of them are long gone and can't be recovered?  What about those who signed illicitly for President Biden?  That's a very serious offense - but which one?  I can think of a dozen counts with which they could be charged.  Can we be sure of identifying all of them?

This is enough to make one's head spin.  I don't know what the fallout will be, but it's a matter of colossal importance in Constitutional terms.  I know the temptation will be to say, "Well, that's water under the bridge, and we can't fix it now, so let's just leave it" . . . but if we do that, we effectively condemn the Constitution and the rule of law to irrelevance.  That's a non-starter, right there - but what to do about it?  That's something that'll take years to figure out.

At the very least, we need a law specifying that anything signed into law by the President is only validly signed if:

• he personally does so (i.e. no autopen!);
• while in full command of his faculties;
• in public, recorded on camera;
• without any influence or "helping hands" involved.

Peter