President Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into his predecessor Joe Biden’s actions during his presidency, accusing aides of a “conspiracy” to “deceive the public about Biden’s mental state”.
Trump aimed at the former president’s use of an autopen, a device replicating signatures to authorise documents. Several presidents, including Trump himself, have used autopens.
He framed its use as evidence of a broader scheme to disguise Biden’s cognitive state.
“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump said on Wednesday.
Biden, 82, swiftly dismissed the allegations, calling Trump’s claims “ridiculous” and politically motivated.
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,” Biden said. “I made the decisions about pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
Biden further accused Trump of attempting to distract Americans from his own administration’s policies, which Democrats argue benefit the wealthy at the expense of working families.
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have escalated efforts to question Biden’s fitness to serve.
A GOP-led House panel has sought testimony from key figures in Biden’s former administration, including his first chief of staff, on what it described as the president’s “mental and physical faculties” during his time in office.
In a follow-up statement, Trump alleged that the American public was “purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power,” during Biden’s tenure.
He suggested that documents bearing Biden’s signature led to “radical policy shifts” that may not have had his full endorsement.
Scrutiny over Biden’s mental and physical capacity has intensified in recent weeks as a new book accused an inner circle within the former administration of covering up his “physical deterioration” during his ill-fated re-election campaign last year.
Original Sin, written by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, alleged that Biden’s condition during the campaign was so poor that aides discussed giving him a wheelchair.
Biden abruptly ended his re-election campaign last July, shortly after weeks of pressure following his disastrous debate performance against Trump.
Some Democrats, including former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have publicly blamed Biden for not exiting the race sooner, which would have given his party more time to anoint a popular replacement.
Early last month, Biden gave his to the BBC since leaving the White House, maintaining he “did not think it would have mattered” if he had left the race sooner.
Shortly after, he announced that he’s been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, which has led to more accusations from the Trump White House that those closest to the former president, including his wife Jill, would have known of his condition earlier.
