In Which We Try To Make Sense Of The Biden Autopen Conspiracy Theory (And Fail Miserably)
They think Joe Biden is evil, but not SO evil that he would sign all of the things he signed while president?
Over the last 10 years, there has been an endless march of baseless conspiracy theories that, despite captivating the hearts and imaginations of a large percentage of the American public, simply defy all logic, reason and sanity. It’s been incredible, truly, to witness what some people will go along with. Random lady says she’s Queen of Canada and that no one has to pay their mortgages anymore? Sure! Let’s follow her around the country and get confused when we lose our houses. Celebrities wear red shoes (possibly made from baby leather) in order to rub it in your face how much they love eating babies and getting high off of their blood? Why not?
But as of late, the most confounding one isn’t really even all that out there. It’s the one in which evil Joe Biden staffers used the White House’s autopen to sign a bunch of bills and pardons without him even knowing about it.
The Trump administration has been pushing this for weeks, without any evidence whatsoever beyond their personal belief that Biden’s “cognitive decline” was so great that his aides decided to take advantage and use the autopen to sign all kinds of executive orders, pardons, clemencies and commutations that he never would have signed or enacted had he been in his right mind.
On June 4, Trump issued a memorandum to the attorney general about this, which read:
In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority. This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history. 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.
Is there any evidence for this beyond Donald Trump’s personal belief that it happened? No, there is not.
“I’ve uncovered, you know, the human mind,” Trump said in an interview last month, when asked if he had any evidence of this whatsoever, adding, “I was in a debate with the human mind, and I didn’t think he knew what the hell he was doing.”
Trump’s memorandum continued:
Notwithstanding these well-documented issues, the White House issued over 1,200 Presidential documents, appointed 235 judges to the Federal bench, and issued more pardons and commutations than any administration in United States history. For instance, just 2 days before Christmas in 2024, the White House announced that Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 most vile and monstrous criminals on Federal death row, including several child killers and mass murderers.
Biden has been on the record as opposing the death penalty at the federal level since his 2020 campaign, which was a big deal given his past support for capital punishment. Not to mention the fact that he was the first president to openly oppose it while in office (Jimmy Carter, while opposed, did not become open about it until after his term ended).
Yet, we are to assume that, had he been in his right mind when all of this was happening, he would not have issued those commutations? What sense does that even make? And we’re also supposed to assume that he also would not have made all of those judicial appointments or issued any documents or pardoned anyone either?
In an interview published in The New York Times over the weekend, Biden refuted the accusation, explaining that his office used the autopen (which has been in regular use since George W. Bush times) to sign documents and pardons because the sheer volume of things to sign made it untenable for him to do it all by himself.
He was also very clear about his reasoning for offering preemptive pardons for his own family, as well as others he feared Trump and his crew would have gone after them.
In terms of my fam — he — go after me through my family. I know how vindictive he is. I mean, everybody knows how vindictive he is. So we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now. [laughs]
And my family didn’t do anything wrong. My sister, my brother-in-law, my — my brother, etc. And — and all it would do is, if they, if he went after them, would be, is run up legal bills. I just, I just know how he operates. And so I made — but I consciously made all those decisions, among others.
While in office, Biden signed 4,245 acts of clemency, the highest number in history, topping Franklin Roosevelt’s 3,796. Would you want to sign 4,245 anythings? I sure wouldn’t, and I happen to enjoy doing weirdly repetitive things. Hell, I made like 15 granny squares yesterday and it’s the middle of summer.
It is entirely reasonable that he would not feel like doing that either. It sounds like an especially unpleasant time. That’s probably why Trump, himself, has often chosen to use it.
The problem with this whole story is that it does not make sense — and as Judge Judy, herself an apparent Republican, says, “If it doesn’t make sense, it’s not true.”
Because how is it that Biden could simultaneously be the terrible person they have long claimed he is, but not be so terrible (by their estimates) that he wouldn’t have signed all of these documents and clemencies they don’t like? I keep going on a mental loop with this one and there is no world in which any of it makes any sense at all.
It’s not entirely dissimilar to their theories about “paid protesters.” How can it be that these people feel so saddened and overwhelmed by people calling them sexist, racist and xenophobic, just because they say things that are sexist, racist and xenophobic, but ALSO certain that there are still so few of us that large protests must be filled with people who are only there because they are being paid to be there, by George Soros?
Not only that, but somehow there isn’t a single whistleblower in either of these massive coverups. Not one person has come forward to say, “This is what happened,” including Joe Biden, the person supposedly tricked into signing all of those things.
Impressive! Because, you know, historically, it is very hard to keep these things under wraps. People talk and the odds that not one person involved with any of this telling anyone anything about any of it are practically nil.
For this to be true, it would require a blend of competence and incompetence at levels never seen before in all of history.
The situation is also not entirely unlike the Cadaver Synod, pictured way up above. The Cadaver Synod (probably my second favorite historical event after the False Dmitris) was a trial, in which Pope Stephen VI or VII (there’s some contention about this) sought to prove that Pope Formosus, the guy who had been pope two popes before he was pope, was illegitimate. Unfortunately, Pope Formosus had been dead for several months — the pope in between them only served for 15 days before he either died of gout or was murdered — so he had to dig up his body and put his corpse on trial. During the trial, Stephen VI or VII questioned him about all the very evil things he had done, while a deacon stood behind his chair and answered for him, confessing to everything. Obviously, he lost, and Stephen VI/VII stripped him of his papal vestments, chopped off his blessing fingers and buried him in a graveyard for foreigners ... from which he was later dug up and dropped in the sea, only to wash up on shore and (reportedly) perform several miracles.
This used to be a great “Wow! The Middle Ages sure were crazy!” story, but in light of Trump, it doesn’t seem quite as out there as it once did.
Between this autopen accusation and Trump’s other plan to “prove” that the 2020 election was stolen, it seems that Trump is more or less trying to have Biden’s presidency declared illegitimate, therefore every document signed or clemency given during it would also be declared illegitimate … which would somehow in his mind allow him to kill all those people on death row, bring charges against Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci — for what? No one actually knows! — and, perhaps most importantly of all, fall asleep at night safe in the knowledge that 100 percent of Americans voted for him to become president in the last three elections?
Or something. His mind doesn’t work so well.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
I’m curious; when Trump pardoned nearly 1600 January 6 rioters, did he sign each one individually?
Due to the universal law of Republican projection, one must assume the entire Trump adminstration has access to his autopen.