Trump’s Department of Justice tried and failed to prosecute former President Joe Biden after a bizarre investigation over his use of an autopen to sign presidential orders came up empty.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that after President Donald Trump had called on the DOJ in November to investigate Biden and his aides, federal prosecutors were unable to bring a criminal case against the former president.
The investigation into Biden’s autopen usage was led by Trump ally and former Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, the current U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
The Times reported that the investigation was quietly closed around the same time as Pirro failed to secure a separate indictment against the six Democratic lawmakers who shared a video asking military personnel not to follow illegal orders.
Pirro’s office dropped that case last month after a grand jury refused to issue an indictment against the lawmakers.
In the weeks following Trump’s assumption of the presidency, the 79-year-old targeted the mental faculties of Biden, 83, claiming that the pardons and commutations issued by the former president via autopen were invalid because he was not mentally lucid enough to approve them.
In November, Trump threatened Biden, whom he called “Crooked Joe,” that he could charge him with perjury over his autopen, and said he would cancel all executive orders signed through the mechanical device that perfectly emulates a president’s signature.
“Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally.”
It’s not the first time Trump has pulled the move. Last year, the president signed a series of executive orders aimed at sanctioning several white-shoe law firms—instructing federal agencies to cancel their existing contracts with them, stripping their security clearances, and restricting their access to federal buildings.
Federal judges blocked the orders against four firms—Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey—after finding Trump’s actions violated the Constitution.
On Monday, the DOJ announced it had abandoned its appeals in the case. The next day, the agency switched gears and said that they were indeed appealing the decision.
The Daily Beast reached out to the DOJ and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington for comment.
The post Trump Goons Launched Crackpot Bid to Lock Up Joe Biden appeared first on The Daily Beast.
