Carl Higbie and other conservative voices are right to be furious — what we’re being told was routine White House procedure looks an awful lot like a cover-up of executive authority. Higbie’s description of Biden’s pardons as “fraudulent” echoes the disgust millions of Americans feel when they learn that autopens and staff sign-offs may have been used in place of a president’s personal approval. If true, this is not just sloppy governance; it’s a betrayal of the public trust and an affront to the Constitution itself.
Republican investigators on the House Oversight Committee didn’t whisper their concerns — they put them into a formal report and demanded answers, arguing that key executive actions during Biden’s term may be illegitimate and warrant a full probe. That report, released on October 28, 2025, raises serious questions about whether aides used mechanical signature devices on pardons and other documents without clear, documented presidential authorization. Americans deserve clarity about who really pulled the levers of power in the final days of that administration.
This controversy even drew action from the top of the Republican Party: on June 4, 2025, President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into Biden’s actions as president, specifically calling out autopen usage and the possibility that aides masked cognitive decline while exercising authority in his stead. The stakes here are huge — if a president’s signature can be replicated and wielded by staff without real oversight, then the checks and balances our Founders built are at risk. That’s why the criminal and administrative implications being discussed in Washington are not hyperbole but necessary responses.
Legal defenders of the autopen point to decades of precedent and memos saying a president does not always need to hand-sign documents, and that pardons have long been considered final and difficult to overturn. But legal technicalities don’t erase the moral rot: even if courts are reluctant to invalidate clemency on procedural grounds, voters and prosecutors can still demand accountability and criminal referrals if forgery, fraud, or false statements are involved. The bottom line is simple — legality on paper should not become a shield for corruption in practice.
Constitutional scholars have warned the path to overturning contested clemency is narrow, noting that challenges are “vanishingly low” unless it can be proven the autopen was used without the president’s consent. That legal reality is why transparency matters more than ever; if there was consent, produce the records, memos, and testimony that prove it. If there was no consent, then we are looking at potential forgery, obstruction, and misconduct that deserve criminal investigation and the harshest scrutiny.
Republican senators and investigators are already moving — from criminal referrals to demands for whistleblowers and document production — because this isn’t merely a Washington scandal, it’s a test of whether our institutions will protect the rule of law or bury inconvenient facts to preserve a narrative. Leaders like Sen. Ted Cruz and committee chairs have warned that any pardon not individually approved could be null and void, and the drumbeat for accountability is only growing louder in conservative circles. Americans who prize the Constitution should stand with those calling for full, fearless investigations rather than media-driven cover-ups.
Patriotic conservatives must do more than vent — we must insist on a full airing of the facts, real oversight, and prosecutions where laws were broken. This fight isn’t about partisan vengeance; it’s about saving the presidency from being reduced to a rubber stamp and protecting the sacred principle that no administration is above the law. If Washington refuses to act, then the people who built this country will have to raise their voices louder, demand justice, and make sure the next generation inherits a republic that still means something.
