The Republican Party’s preoccupation with Joe Biden is ongoing, with GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill investigating the former president’s mental acuity, and Donald Trump ordering the Justice Department to launch a parallel investigation into the Democrat’s use of an autopen.
It’s difficult to say with certainty what, exactly, Republicans expect to find, but the basic idea is that there was some kind of elaborate conspiracy, involving unnamed officials in or around the White House, who used the presidential autopen to engage in all sorts of mischief — signing everything from executive orders to pardons — while taking advantage of the fact that Biden was so completely incapacitated that he had no idea what was going on around him.
The apparent partisan goal among GOP officials is to invalidate the documents the Democrat signed, opening the door to, among other things, prosecuting those Biden protected.
Is there any evidence to support the Republicans’ conspiracy theory? Well, no. In fact, the former president told The New York Times this week that while he utilized the autopen tool — as other modern presidents from both parties have done — he personally “made every decision,” and nothing was ever signed without his direct and express approval.
But the GOP fishing expedition continues, led in large part by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, who’s been overpromising and underdelivering on assorted partisan conspiracy theories for quite a while. Indeed, the Kentucky Republican has used his authority in recent months to send out all kinds of letters, subpoena notices and requests for information related to his investigation into the former president and the White House autopen.
As NBC News reported, however, Comer apparently didn’t put pen to paper before sending out that letters, subpoena notices and requests for information.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., has been leading the probe into Joe Biden’s cognitive state during his presidency, with Republicans alleging that Biden’s occasional use of an “autopen” to sign documents … demonstrated that he wasn’t fully in control or aware of what his administration was doing. But documents show that some of the letters and subpoena notices Comer has sent out in connection to his investigation have been signed using a digital signature — not written by the congressman himself.
NBC News’ scrutiny of Comer’s correspondence found that while his letters included his signature, “a look at the metadata of the letters shows that they were created by someone besides Comer. And hovering over Comer’s signature in Adobe Acrobat shows that it is a digital image.”
A spokesperson for the Oversight Committee responded to requests for comment with a statement that sounded quite a bit like the answers Biden and his team have also offered in response to the entire misguided conspiracy theory. Comer’s spokesperson said, for example, that committee chairs from both parties have routinely used digital signatures, which is true — though it’s also true that presidents from both parties have routinely used autopens. The spokesperson also said Comer personally approved the materials that were signed digitally, which is true, though according to Biden, he also personally approved the materials that were signed with an autopen. The spokesperson concluded that the two stories “are not even remotely comparable,” though that’s a debatable point: When the congressman who has accused Biden of failing to personally sign important documents fails to personally sign important documents, it’s tough to say that there are no relevant parallels. “Comer using an autopen to investigate an autopen is just so James. That’s what we love about him, his attention to detail,” Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida told NBC News sarcastically.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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