By Jonathan Turley | Commentary, U.S. News & World Report
We need accountability and greater transparency on matters of presidential health and competence.
“Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?”
When then-President Joe Biden asked in September 2022 if U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski, an Indiana Republican who had died weeks earlier in a car accident, was in a meeting, observers were shocked. Biden had not only issued a statement of condolence, he had lowered the flags at the White House in her honor.
As Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple noted last week, that moment should have been a wake-up call. In Washington parlance, it left no room for “plausible deniability” about whether Biden was still fit to hold the office of president. And it wasn’t just Democratic politicians who were willfully blindto Biden’s obvious deterioration; it was the media, too.
President Donald Trump’s June 4 order for his administration to investigate Biden’s competence may answer some of these questions, including the possible abuse of an autopen to sign legislation, pardons and other documents while he was president. Last month, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee took the first steps in its own investigation, demanding sworn testimony from Biden’s doctor and top advisers.
The New York Times called Trump’s orders for an investigation part of a “campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies” and “the latest effort by President Trump to stoke conspiracy theories about his predecessor.”
There is a weird dissonance when journalists blame Biden’s White House for a coverup, but then criticize efforts to investigate that coverup. While criminal charges are unlikely to stem from the investigation, if the White House autopen was indeed used without Biden’s consent, that could amount to forgery, obstruction of justice, fraud or other serious crimes.
The complicity of politicians, staff and even the press in deception is nothing new in Washington. A century ago, after President Woodrow Wilson experienced a severe stroke in September 1919, his wife, Edith, and his staff covered up the severity of his condition, which made him incapable of fulfilling his duties till the end of his term and affected the race for a Democratic successor. To end such abuses, we must demand accountability and greater transparency on matters of presidential health and competence.
The 25th Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1967, was intended to address succession issues, including the incapacity of a president, but it is very difficult to remove a president without the support of the vice president and most of the Cabinet, meaning, little can be done without a virtual mutiny within the White House.
That is particularly true when staff have an interest in maintaining the illusion to keep the president and themselves in power. With Biden, according to the reporting in the book “Original Sin” by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, the staff regularly cut off the access to Biden for his own Cabinet secretaries and other administration officials, limited public events and scripted short remarks for the president to read from teleprompters.
Allegations that Biden’s staff misused the autopen are exceptionally difficult to prove, and Biden has issued a statement that he had full knowledge of everything that was signed.
Absent a confession of incapacity, Congress would need someone like John Dean, the White House counsel during the Nixon administrationwho was willing to break from the ranks and implicate his former associates in Nixon’s coverups. So far, there do not appear to be any Deans on the Biden staff, who are likely eager to avoid being implicatedinpotential improper use of the autopen or other actions that may have circumvented the president or covered up his decline.
But that doesn’t mean that the Trump administration and Congress shouldn’t be trying to get to the bottom of what happened. The worst thing for the American people would be a collective shrug and a resumption of business as usual.
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