On Wednesday, President Donald Trump ordered a formal investigation into the presidency of Joe Biden, raising concerns about Biden’s mental fitness while in office and questioning the legitimacy of decisions made during his tenure.
In response, former President Biden released a statement Wednesday evening asserting that he was fully in control of presidential decisions during his administration.
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” Biden said.
According to a Presidential Memorandum published on the White House website, Trump directed officials to examine whether “certain individuals conspired to mislead the public about Biden’s cognitive condition and unlawfully exercised presidential authority in his name.”
The memorandum cites Biden’s “documented cognitive decline” and his reliance on an autopen—a device that mechanically replicates signatures—as raising “serious questions” about the authenticity and legality of his executive actions.
“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump wrote, adding that the public was “deliberately kept in the dark about who was truly exercising executive power, even as Biden’s signature appeared on thousands of documents implementing radical policy changes.”
Concerns over Biden’s cognitive health had been a persistent Republican narrative throughout his presidency, but escalated sharply in 2024 after a widely criticized debate performance led him to withdraw from his reelection campaign—fueling further scrutiny of his age and mental acuity.
