America deserves better than a presidency run by staffers, rubber stamps, and autopens. That’s not just poor leadership—it’s a constitutional crisis. And as the investigations into the Biden administration’s final year unfold, it’s becoming clear that what we witnessed wasn’t just incompetence. It may have been deliberate deception.
President Donald Trump has greenlit a sweeping probe into whether former President Joe Biden’s aides unlawfully governed in his place—handling executive orders, issuing pardons, and manipulating the machinery of the presidency while the man elected to lead the country was mentally and physically unfit. Let’s be blunt: if true, that’s not just unprecedented—it’s a betrayal of the American people.
According to the Oversight Project’s Mike Howell, “You have to look at the autopen. It’s the instrumentality by which they were able to continue operating the White House without a president.” That’s no small accusation. We’re not talking about signing birthday letters to school kids—we’re talking about the use of an autopen to authorize sweeping immigration orders, controversial pardons, and climate policy edicts, all without any evidence that Biden was even aware of what was happening on his watch.
It’s telling that Biden’s defenders can’t point to any clear, consistent public remarks by the former president explaining or defending many of the actions taken in his name during his final year. Instead, we get vague assurances from allies like Sen. Chris Coons, who insists Biden was “present and engaging” at a breakfast meeting. That might sound comforting—until you realize that’s the bar now being used to justify four years of executive decisions.
The central question before Congress and the American people is this: Was Joe Biden in charge of the country, or was a cabal of unelected aides making presidential decisions behind closed doors? If the latter is even partially true, we need to reckon with the constitutional implications immediately. This is about the integrity of the office of the presidency, not just partisan score-settling.
Let’s remember, the 25th Amendment exists for precisely this kind of situation—when a president is no longer mentally or physically capable of executing the duties of the office. But there’s no indication it was ever seriously considered. Why? Because invoking it would have exposed the truth: that Biden was not in command, and the bureaucracy didn’t want to risk transparency. They preferred to govern in the shadows, using legal gray areas and mechanical signatures to simulate leadership.
Legal experts admit that proving criminal wrongdoing in this case will be difficult. But the absence of a clear statute does not mean there’s no scandal. As constitutional scholar John Yoo put it, “Their focus should be on whether the laws implementing the 25th Amendment for the suspension of a president should be updated.” In other words, this isn’t just about one man—it’s about preventing a future where staffers can impersonate a president to push through an agenda the American people never voted for.
This isn’t hypothetical. One energy watchdog has already identified eight major climate-related executive actions signed by Biden—potentially via autopen—with no public commentary or explanation from the man himself. That’s not how representative government works. That’s how banana republics function.
Critics, of course, are quick to claim that this is just political theater—a distraction. But that’s the same excuse Democrats used for years to justify their witch hunts against Trump. The difference? Trump was actually in charge of his White House. He didn’t need handlers to prop him up or staffers to sign orders while he napped.
The American people deserve to know who was running their country. If Biden wasn’t mentally fit to govern, we need to know when that started, who kept the charade going, and what decisions were made without constitutional authority. Sunlight is the best disinfectant—and President Trump is turning on the floodlights.
The left will howl, the media will spin, and the legal establishment will stall. But the truth has a way of surfacing. And when it does, we may look back on the Biden years not just as a period of decline—but as a silent coup by the administrative state against the very office it is supposed to serve.
