Former President Joe Biden is trying to slam the door shut just as Congress starts asking uncomfortable questions, and he’s doing it with the same move Washington lifers always reach for when the walls close in, executive privilege.
According to Fox News Digital, Biden quietly invoked executive privilege in an October 1, 2025 letter to the National Archives, attempting to block lawmakers from accessing records tied to his administration’s use of an autopen. That letter suddenly looks a lot less academic now that Republicans are digging into whether major executive actions were being rubber-stamped while Biden’s mental fitness was rapidly declining.
Biden’s explanation is the usual boilerplate. He claims releasing the documents would damage “institutional interests of the Presidency” and chill candid advice from advisers. Translation, trust us, don’t look behind the curtain. He insists hundreds of documents have already been turned over, but the ones Congress really wants involve presidential decision-making and deliberations. In other words, the good stuff.
The Trump White House is having none of it. White House Counsel David Warrington flatly rejected Biden’s claim, arguing that executive privilege can’t be used to hide what he called an abuse of power and a coordinated effort to shield Biden’s diminished faculties from the public. Warrington didn’t mince words, saying the autopen scandal must be fully exposed so nothing like it ever happens again.
And he’s right. This isn’t about routine use of an autopen, which presidents have used for decades under specific circumstances. This is about whether unelected aides were effectively running the executive branch while the president struggled to function. That’s not a paperwork issue, that’s a constitutional crisis.
Warrington also pointed out discrepancies in Biden’s signatures, noting that the signature on his privilege letter doesn’t match the ones used to pardon family members or his son. That little detail alone should make any honest observer nervous. If signatures are inconsistent, who exactly was approving what, and when?
Biden has repeatedly claimed he made all the decisions himself, calling suggestions otherwise “ridiculous and false.” That defense rang hollow back in June, and it rings even hollower now. Americans watched his decline in real time, from confused speeches to that catastrophic 2024 debate that finally forced Democrats to pull the plug.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer and Senate Republicans are pushing forward anyway, executive privilege be damned. Comer has already called the so-called Biden Autopen Presidency one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history, and it’s hard to argue otherwise. If aides were signing executive orders, pardons, and proclamations without direct presidential approval, then the presidency itself was hijacked.
Biden can claim privilege all he wants, but privilege doesn’t cover deception. It doesn’t cover hiding incapacity. And it certainly doesn’t cover taking executive power away from voters and handing it to an unelected inner circle. This fight isn’t going away, and no amount of carefully worded letters to the archives is going to make it disappear.
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