The Justice Department, in the wake of calls by President Trump to criminally investigate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., scrutinized whether Mr. Biden and his aides broke the law in using the autopen to sign presidential documents, but was ultimately unable to move forward with making a case, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The department’s failure to build a criminal case against Mr. Biden and his aides is the latest example of its increasing inability to follow through on Mr. Trump’s demands and bring indictments against those he wants to be criminally targeted. Some of those cases were rejected by grand juries, some were rejected by judges and some, like the autopen case, were abandoned by prosecutors.
But the fact that prosecutors even pursued the matter to begin with reflects the degree to which Mr. Trump has sought to use the levers of government to undermine Mr. Biden’s presidency by seizing on an unsubstantiated theory: that the pardons Mr. Biden issued in his final months in office were invalid because he did not have the mental capacity to consent to them.
The autopen investigation was led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which is run by a longtime Trump ally, Jeanine Pirro. The inquiry was quietly shelved in recent months, around the time that prosecutors under Ms. Pirro sought and failed to secure an indictment in a different case: one against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video in the fall that enraged Mr. Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse to follow illegal orders.
In that case, a grand jury refused to issue an indictment, a once incredibly rare action in the federal court system, but one that has become more common as the Trump administration pushes the limits of the criminal justice system.
In both the autopen and lawmakers’ video cases, veteran prosecutors were skeptical from the outset that there was anything close to sufficient evidence to justify criminal charges, according to people familiar with the matter.
In a department that is often subject to the whims of the president, it is unclear whether administration officials would seek to revive the investigation elsewhere or press the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington to try again.
A spokesman for Ms. Pirro said her office would neither confirm nor deny the existence of criminal investigations. The Justice Department did not reply to a request for comment.
Weeks after taking office, Mr. Trump and his allies in the conservative news media stoked claims that Mr. Biden had broken the law through his use of the autopen, focusing on pardons and commutations Mr. Biden granted in the final days of his presidency. They suggested that his mental acuity had deteriorated to such a degree that he could not make such decisions.
Mr. Biden has forcefully denied those assertions, calling Mr. Trump and his allies “liars.” “I made every decision,” Mr. Biden said in an interview with The New York Times over the summer, adding that his staff had used an autopen to replicate his signature because “we’re talking about a whole lot of people.”
By April, Ed Martin, a Trump loyalist who was then the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, was investigating whether Mr. Biden was competent enough to pardon his family members and others during his final days in office. As part of that inquiry, Mr. Martin sent letters to Mr. Biden’s former aides demanding information about Mr. Biden’s role in issuing the grants of clemency.
Mr. Trump increased the pressure on the Justice Department last June when he signed an order directing his White House counsel and Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Mr. Biden’s mental acuity and whether Mr. Biden’s aides had illegally used the device.
The administration’s attacks on Mr. Biden extended to its décor at the White House. When the president installed a series of portraits of past presidents in gilded frames, the spot for Mr. Biden featured an image of an autopen instead, sandwiched between two photos of Mr. Trump.
The autopen investigation continued after Mr. Martin was removed from the prosecutor’s office and replaced by Ms. Pirro, but it suffered from several crucial problems, according to the people familiar with the inquiry, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss deliberations that are supposed to remain secret. Investigators were never quite clear what crime, if any, had been committed by the Biden administration’s use of the autopen.
It was also unclear whether investigators should focus their attention on the actions of Mr. Biden’s aides or on Mr. Biden himself, given that the United States Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling in 2024, granted broad immunity to presidents for most acts undertaken as part of their official duties.
In recent months, prosecutors determined that despite Mr. Trump’s desire to seek vengeance against Mr. Biden and his aides, there was no credible case to bring, the people said. The prosecutors never brought a potential indictment before a grand jury.
Still, the failed inquiry has only added to the sense among many federal investigators that Mr. Trump has become increasingly erratic in his desire to use the criminal justice system to punish his political adversaries for behavior that comes nowhere close to being criminal. Time and again, prosecutors in U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country have been pressured to open investigations into Mr. Trump’s foes and have responded with various reactions — some pushing ahead with inquiries they may not fully believe in and others pushing back by refusing to prosecute or resigning in protest.
In January, the Justice Department opened an investigation into Democratic officials in Minnesota on the theory that their public criticism of Mr. Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown in the state amounted to a conspiracy to impede federal law enforcement. A series of grand jury subpoenas issued as part of that inquiry are now being challenged in court behind closed doors, according to people familiar with the effort.
In November, Ms. Pirro also approved a criminal investigation into Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, whom Mr. Trump has long sought to supplant. More recently, the F.B.I. searched an elections office in the Atlanta area based on Mr. Trump’s repeatedly debunked claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining high-profile federal investigations.
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