President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered the Department of Justice and White House counsel to launch an investigation into whether actions taken by former President Joe Biden are invalid, based on unfounded accusations that his aides made decisions for him.
Aside from the fact that the president directly ordering an investigation into his former political opponent would probably have been an impeachable offense until a few months ago, this investigation is, for the most part, meritless. It does not allege any laws were broken nor any constitutional provisions. It is what it looks like: a fishing expedition designed to exact revenge on Trump’s opponents and feed negative stories about Democrats to the press.
The presidential memorandum Trump issued on Wednesday claims that “former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen [automatic signature] to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority.”
“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” the memorandum states. “The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”
