Autopen scandal and cover-up are finishing what his actions on the border and Afghanistan started
When U.S. presidents leave the White House at the end of their terms, life is usually a walk in the park. They get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to give 40-minute canned speeches. They and their wives sign book contracts that give them huge advances. They nudge their fat-cat supporters into writing big checks for presidential libraries that glorify their lives and legacies. And for the most part, they’re treated as American royalty.
That’s how it was for Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan (until he got Alzheimer’s disease) and George H. W. Bush, and still is for Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Unfortunately for President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, the road to Easy Street is now blocked, and they only have themselves to blame.
Things would have gone as smoothly for them as their predecessors had they honored Joe Biden’s 2020 commitment to be a one term “transition president,” but alas, the Bidens thought there was enough gas left in his tank in his early 80s to last four more years. So they chose to pursue reelection in 2024 and proceeded to run out of fuel last summer in circumstances so humiliating during his debate meltdown that it eliminated the possibility of the Democratic Party’s nominee getting elected as the nation’s 47th president.
To the horror of their party, the Bidens’ ill-considered decision to give it another go allowed Donald Trump to follow in Grover Cleveland’s footsteps as a two non-consecutive term president.
From a legacy standpoint, preventing the Democrats from being in control of the executive branch for these four years probably makes Joe Biden a permanent pariah to his party. He was already despised by Republicans for his inflationary economic policies, open border lunacy and disastrous withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan that likely emboldened Vladimir Putin to instigate war with Ukraine.
To add to last year’s train wreck, 2025 has now brought forth credible reports indicating a cover-up of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, orchestrated by his wife, family and inner circle staff, who collectively conspired to plug in an autopen and sign more than 4,000 pardons, preemptive pardons and commutations without the president even knowing the names of those affected, per the research of Axios and CNN political correspondent Alex Thompson, co-author (with Jake Tapper) of the recent bestseller, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and his Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Even the left-leaning New York Times has confirmed that there were blanket pardons signed by autopen.
In the last few weeks, Biden’s legacy has moved from a mere downward spiral into full-blown freefall upon his doctor Kevin O’Connor, and Jill Biden’s Chief of Staff Anthony Bernal taking the Fifth Amendment in response to legitimate questions from the House Oversight Committee investigating the cognitive cover-up and potentially unauthorized signings, thereby expanding the scandal’s breadth to Watergate and Lewinsky proportions.
O’Connor’s lawyer said his client took the Fifth Amendment on the basis of doctor-patient privilege and ethical obligations, though these grounds fall flat since Biden could have easily waived the privilege and told O’Connor, “Doc, just tell the committee the truth!”
Furthermore, O’Connor could have refused to answer questions by asserting the privilege, and yet instead he took the Fifth.
After Bernal followed O’Connor’s lead, the House committee’s most likely choice for its next witness is Jill Biden herself, who would make history by being the first American first lady to take the Fifth Amendment in response to an inquiry about what happened during her husband’s presidency.
Lawyers for O’Connor and Bernal reminded the press that pleading the Fifth doesn’t imply guilt. They can say that all they want, and from a legal perspective, it’s true, but in the court of public opinion it definitely puts a glaring, self-inflicted stain on Team Biden’s credibility and legacy.
Regardless of how this scandal ends, Joe Biden’s place in history and capacity to receive post-presidency easy money are forever shattered. The more people from his White House who choose to take the Fifth Amendment, the more likely his ranking in presidential history will continue to sink. With no big donors lining up, it appears likely he’ll become the first American chief executive since Calvin Coolidge without a library.
As the final piece of Biden’s fall from grace, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Biden finally found a publisher willing to pay for his White House memoir. At $10 million, his advance is one-sixth of what Barack and Michelle Obama received for their book.
