Mike Howell, a leading investigator in the Biden autopen scandal, told The Federalist last week that “investigating is no longer good enough. We need accountability.”
A majority of Americans agree, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll.
The national telephone and online survey of 1,157 likely voters finds 52 percent of respondents believe former President Joe Biden’s aides tied to the suspect use of the autopen should be criminally prosecuted. Less than a third of voters (32 percent) disagree, while 17 percent of those surveyed said they are not sure whether prosecutions are in order. The survey was conducted Oct. 28-30.
Last week’s report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform provides copious evidence of the former president’s incredibly shrinking cognitive and physical abilities, his “inner circle of loyalists attempting to mislead the nation to ignore what people’s eyes plainly showed them,” and the constitutional crisis his decline and the cover-up created.
Ultimately, the committee report concluded that all of Biden’s executive actions signed by the autopen “without proper, corresponding, contemporaneous, written approval traceable to the president’s own consent” are “void.”
Who will make the executive actions null and void remains to be seen.
‘Should Be Prosecuted’
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the Oversight Committee, asked the Department of Justice to “conduct a comprehensive review of all executive actions taken during the Biden presidency and scrutinize key Biden aides — Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Annie Tomasini, and Anthony Bernal — who pleaded the Fifth Amendment during the investigation.” Attorney General Pam Bondi replied that her “team has already initiated a review of the Biden administration’s reported use of autopen for pardons.” She promised accountability to the American people.
Howell, president of the Oversight Project — the government watchdog that took the lead in investigating troubling signs that Biden was unaware of many of the unprecedented number of executive orders, pardons, commutations, and proclamations signed by autopen — said review time is over. It’s time for prosecutions. Until then, Howell said, those who still believe in foundational principles and abhor the unconstitutional idea of a presidency by committee are a long way from victory.
“Victory happens when accountability happens,” he said on a recent edition of The Federalist Radio Hour podcast. “The people who have the no-good pardons should be federally prosecuted. And the people who implemented the scheme of forgery and lying should also be prosecuted.”
So far, there’s been no rush to accountability — from congressional Republicans or at Bondi’s Department of Justice — in the autopen scandal. Fox News did report last week that a source familiar with the DOJ’s review said “it looks like the investigation has heated up in recent weeks and it appears there’s a focus in Delaware as well as Washington, D.C.”
We’ll see.
Here’s something that should steel some spines.
The Rasmussen poll found 55 percent of likely U.S. voters “consider it likely that, when Biden was president, members of his White House staff used the autopen to sign documents without Biden’s knowledge.” Fifty-five percent! That’s with corporate media doing everything it can to ignore the scandal.
A Biden spokesman called the allegations “baseless.”
“This investigation into baseless claims has confirmed what has been clear from the start: President Biden made the decisions of his presidency. There was no conspiracy, no cover-up, and no wrongdoing,” the official told multiple media outlets.
Howell said the left’s claims that presidents have used the autopen since the technology became available is disingenuous at best.
“The autopen was designed as a tool for executive convenience … not as a tool to basically replace the president. And that’s what happened in the Biden years,” Howell told The Federalist.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
