Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into Joe Biden’s actions as president, alleging top aides masked his predecessor’s “cognitive decline”.
The investigation will build on a Republican-led campaign already under way to discredit the former president and overturn some of his executive actions, including pardons and federal rules issued toward the end of his term in office.
Biden issued a statement dismissing the idea of a cover-up as “ridiculous”. “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
GOP lawmakers on Wednesday sought testimony from five of Biden’s top aides and advisers, including his first chief of staff, about his “mental and physical faculties”. The House oversight committee headed by the Republican representative James Comer of Kentucky was already speaking to four others, according to reports from CBS News.
A separate inquiry was launched on Tuesday by Ed Martin, a justice department attorney, into clemencies Biden issued in his final days in office to family members as well as death row inmates.
Biden’s cognitive abilities during his presidency have been a Republican talking point for several years and Trump has frequently suggested that some of Biden’s actions are invalid because his aides were usurping presidential authority to cover up what Trump claims is Biden’s cognitive decline.
Biden, 82, is not significantly older than Trump who turns 79 this month and has also faced questions about cognitive decline. But scrutiny about Biden’s health intensified after a disastrous debate performance going into the 2024 election that led to him dropping out.
Concerns about his age and mental acuity have come into sharper focus in recent weeks following the disclosure that the former president was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Reporting in numerous US media outlets and a recent book co-authored by Jake Tapper, a CNN host, have also revealed that top Democrats and people in Biden’s inner circle had serious misgivings about his ability to do the job of president. The book is referenced in an announcement about the House oversight committee’s expanded inquiry.
In a memo, Trump took aim at Biden’s use of an autopen – a mechanical device that is used to replicate a person’s authentic signature, as used by presidents for decades – to sign executive actions. The administration’s investigation will focus on “who ran the United States while President Biden was in office”, according to the memo.
“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump wrote. “The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”
Trump directed Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and David Warrington, the White House counsel, to handle the investigation.
Comer requested transcribed interviews with five Biden aides, alleging they had participated in a “cover-up”.
“These five former senior advisers were eyewitnesses to President Biden’s condition and operations within the Biden White House,” Comer said in a statement. “They must appear before the House oversight committee and provide truthful answers about President Biden’s cognitive state and who was calling the shots.”
Interviews were requested with White House senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, former deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed and Steve Ricchetti, a former counsellor to the president.
Comer reiterated his call for Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, and former senior White House aides Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams and Neera Tanden to appear before the committee. He warned subpoenas would be issued this week if they refused to schedule voluntary interviews.
Democrats have called the investigations a distraction from issues with the current administration. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, the former president Bill Clinton said he believed Biden was mentally sound.
“The only concern I thought he had to deal with was: ‘Could anybody do that job until they were 86?’” Clinton said. “We’d had several long talks. I had never seen him and walked away thinking ‘He can’t do this any more.’”
With Associated Press