First Senate hearing targets Biden’s mental health and cover-up

Republicans have begun their investigations and hearings to try to prove whether former President Joe Biden really was in charge during his four years in the Administration. The first hearing on the former president's mental health was held today.

“Unfit to Serve: How the Biden Cover-Up Endangered America and Undermined the Constitution” was the title of the hearing held in the Senate Judiciary Committee. None of the witnesses were part of the Biden Administration and the main objective of the session was to seek mechanisms to prevent a similar situation from happening again in the country.

The Republicans invited three witnesses: Theodore Wold, a former Trump administration official; Sean Spicer, President Trump's former press secretary; and John Harrison, an academic specializing in constitutional law.

Meanwhile, the Democrats did not bring any witnesses and did not attend the hearing, assuring that the accusations on this issue do not contribute to the country. The only Democrat present was Senator Dick Durbin, who stated that the Senate should be debating issues such as the G7 summit instead of the accusations against the former president.

However, for the Republicans, the issue is of paramount importance and could even be about crimes committed by the closest circle to President Biden. Senator Ted Cruz asserted that the Biden Administration 'may go down in history as the most brazen constitutional fraud in American history.'

All three witnesses agreed that if members of the President's team signed documents without Joe Biden's knowledge, they should go before Congress and be subject to investigation.

The controversial use of autopen

Theodore Wold, who is director of the Administrative State Project at the Claremont Institute's Center for the American Way of Life, used his opening remarks to point out several relevant facts about autopen use during the Biden Administration.

"At least three different autopen signatures were in use throughout President Biden's tenure in the White House. In June 2022, the Biden White House began deploying the autopen to sign clemency warrants and executive orders. Autopen use skyrocketed from there. We found that of the 51 clemency warrants issued during the Biden presidency, over half, 32 in total, were signed with an autopen."

Another issue discussed during the hearing was the importance of requesting records from the Biden Administration proving that the president was indeed aware of everything that was signed with an autopen. Wold said the following, "We reviewed President Biden's schedule in his publicly available media and were unable to find any record of President Biden's personally approving these actions, such as a statement issued by the President himself to reporters."

He further added that, "We found that the Biden White House used the auto pen to affix President Biden's signature to clemency warrants and executive orders while the President himself was in Washington, D.C. for at least some of that day and thus was presumably available to sign important executive actions."

On this issue, Senator Cruz highlighted how progressively the Biden Administration increased the use of the autopen to the point of signing all orders with the device. "In 2023, Biden issued 24 executive orders, 16 were auto penned. In 2024, Biden issued 19, 14 were auto penned. In 2025, Biden issued 14 executive orders. Every single one was auto penned," the Republican said.

The consequences

If Republicans indeed succeed in proving that former President Biden was unaware of the autopen-signed documents, one of the most important questions is what happens to those orders. In this regard Wold asserted that if the president was not aware, the authorizations, executive orders and pardons would not be legally binding.

Another major concern for Republicans is what to do going forward to prevent a similar situation. This is what Professor John Harrison said when asked about the possibility of using impeachment to address this type of situation: "There's a doubt right now whether the impeachment process, and it goes back a long, long way, whether the impeachment process is a way of dealing with inability as opposed to misconduct. It's clearly primarily directed at misconduct."

Harrison recommended to senators the following, "I think that if members of Congress are thinking about an additional constitutional amendment, and maybe they should be, they should think both about adapting the impeachment process to inability, which, as I say, right now it's not clear it's properly used in those situations, or creating yet some other political process to deal with presidential inability if lawmakers think that the political process that's in sections three and four of the 25th Amendment is inadequate."

Amendment 25 establishes the process for removing a president if he is deemed to lack the ability to perform his duties, but that path requires the vice president and Cabinet to recognize the problem and act. Republicans want to work on new ways to proceed even if the president's team is concealing his health status and exerting control over the situation.

This hearing was just the beginning of a series of several to be held by Republicans in both the House and Senate. In the following hearings, several members of the Biden Administration will have to testify, among them Karine Jean-Pierre, the former president's press secretary.