Late Wednesday, Donald Trump broke new ground, directing the Justice Department to launch a wide-ranging investigation into Joe Biden and officials in the Democrat’s administration, based on Republican conspiracy theories about the former president’s mental health. It was an unprecedented move: An incumbent American president had never before publicly ordered a federal probe of his predecessor.
There was a degree of irony to the circumstances. After his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump spent years insisting that Biden had ordered an investigation into him — an odd conspiracy theory for which there is literally no evidence. As of this week, it’s Trump who’s doing exactly what he falsely accused his predecessor of doing.
The day after the incumbent president delivered his directive to Attorney General Pam Bondi, as NBC News reported, a reporter asked Trump a good question.
Trump said he does not have evidence to support his claims of illegal autopen use during the Biden administration. Asked by NBC News whether he has uncovered any evidence that anything specific was signed without Biden’s knowledge or that someone in the former president’s administration acting illegally, Trump said, ‘No.’
The Republican specifically said, “No, but I’ve uncovered, you know, the human mind. I was in a debate with the human mind.” He went on to say, “So, you know, it’s just one of those things.”
Q: Have you uncovered evidence that anything was signed without Biden's knowledge?TRUMP: I don't think Biden would knowQ: I'm asking if you've uncovered any informationTRUMP: No. But I've uncovered the human mind. I was in a debate with the human mind.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-06-05T16:29:58.994Z
In other words, as far as Trump is concerned, he debated Biden last year; the Democrat struggled; so the Justice Department should investigate the former president and his team to see if White House aides secretly signed laws, orders, directives and pardons without Biden’s knowledge.
In this country, federal law enforcement is supposed to launch investigations when presented with evidence of wrongdoing. As of now, however, the Trump administration is less concerned with the existence of evidence and more concerned with a president who believes he’s “uncovered, you know, the human mind.”
I can appreciate why this might seem like the latest in a series of head-shaking “Trump being Trump” stories, but it has a broader significance. A sitting American president, effectively by his own admission, just ordered the attorney general to launch an unprecedented fishing expedition against a former American president on the basis of a failed debate performance.
What’s more, this week’s White House offensive marked the third time in three months that Trump has ordered baseless investigations into Americans he perceives as political foes.
The story was soon eclipsed by dozens of other administration controversies, but in April, Trump signed two first-of-their-kind executive orders targeting a pair of officials from his first term who defied him.
There was barely a pretense in the orders that the targeted former officials — Christopher Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Miles Taylor, a former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official — had done anything wrong. Indeed, the closer one looked at the stated rationales in support of the directives, the more ridiculous they appeared.
Nevertheless, the president directed Pam Bondi and the Department of Homeland Security to launch a “review” into Krebs, while simultaneously ordering DHS to investigate Taylor.
A week later, The New York Times’ Jonathan Swan reminded White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, “The president has long said that it would be an abuse of power for a president to direct prosecutors to investigate him. Last week, President Trump explicitly directed the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs to see if it can find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing. How is that not an abuse of power, to direct the Justice Department to look into an individual, a named individual?”
Leavitt struggled badly to defend Trump’s move, and for good reason: The directives were indefensible. That did not, however, stop the Republican president from pushing the problem to a new level by going after his immediate predecessor. I can appreciate why the media landscape is crowded, but I continue to believe this should be more than a one-day story. Trump — who ran on an authoritarian platform, who’s trying to concentrate power while expressing indifference to the rule of law — has now ordered three investigations into Americans he doesn’t like. He has an enemies list, and he’s using the power of the presidency to target people on that list, despite the inconvenient fact that there’s no evidence whatsoever of actual wrongdoing. If the pushback is muted, Trump will do what he’s always done: assume that he can get away with such an abuse, while preparing to go even further down the same radical and dangerous path. Not to put too fine a point on this, but if the president can sic the Justice Department on his critics and perceived enemies and this isn’t seen as a dramatic scandal, who’ll be next? How far down his enemies list will he go? I’m reminded anew of J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar put on the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush who published a Bluesky thread on the orders against Krebs and Taylor, calling them “shameful” and “constitutionally corrupt” and accused Trump of “palpably unconstitutional conduct.” The more routine this becomes, the greater the severity of the offense. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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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