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EXCLUSIVE: Former President Joe Biden requested executive privilege amid the Congressional investigations into his administration’s use of the autopen, with the Trump administration rejecting the request Tuesday, Fox News Digital learned.
“I am concerned that disclosure of these materials would damage important institutional interests of the Presidency, including by impairing the ability of future Presidents to receive robust, candid advice from their close advisers. For these reasons, I hereby assert executive privilege over the documents listed,” Biden wrote in a letter to Archival Operations Division of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Oct. 1, 2025, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Fox News Digital.
“I have raised no objections to multiple requests for Presidential records from my Administration, and hundreds of documents have already been provided to Congress pursuant to those requests, but the records now proposed for release include documents reflecting presidential decisionmaking and deliberations and other materials that are protected by executive privilege,” Biden wrote in the letter obtained by Fox Digital Tuesday.
White House Counsel David Warrington responded Tuesday to the request in a letter to NARA, denying the calls for executive immunity. Such immunity protects government officials, notably the president, from lawsuits or prosecution over actions conducted while performing official duties.
TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN ON VOIDING BIDEN AUTOPEN ACTIONS, INCLUDING PARDONS AND COMMUTATIONS
“As President Trump has stated, the abuse of the autopen that took place during the Biden Presidency, and the extraordinary efforts to shield President Biden’s diminished faculties from the public, must be subject to a full accounting to ensure nothing similar ever happens again,” Warrington wrote.
“Similarly, President Biden’s repeated abuses of the rights of American citizens during the pandemic and his politically motivated efforts to investigate Members of Congress must also be subject to a full accounting to ensure nothing similar ever happens again. Congress has a compelling need in service of its legislative functions to understand the circumstances that led to all these horrific events,” the letter continued.
Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office for comment on Tuesday afternoon on the denied request.
REPORT ALLEGING TOP BIDEN OFFICIALS RAISED CONCERNS OVER AUTOPEN RESURFACES AFTER TRUMP TERMINATES DOCUMENTS
Warrington pointed out that a thorough investigation also is needed because Biden’s signature requesting executive immunity did not match his signatures on the pardons he issues for his son Hunter Biden or other family members.
“Remarkably, that letter demonstrates the importance of these congressional investigations. President Biden’s signature does not match the one he used to pardon his family or his son,” Warrington wrote, including photos of the three different signatures.
An autopen is a machine programmed to replicate a person’s signature that has been used by presidents going back decades. The machine, however, has haunted the Biden administration since their exit from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as Congress digs into the use of the pen to sign official presidential documents.
Biden has denied accusations that official presidential documents were signed by the autopen without his knowledge, brushing off the accusations as “ridiculous.”
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations,” Biden said in a statement back in June as Trump and Republicans sounded off about the scandal. “Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project first investigated the Biden administration’s use of an autopen earlier in 2025 and found that the same signature was on a bevy of executive orders and other official documents, while Biden’s signature on the document announcing his departure from the 2024 race varied from the apparent machine-produced signature. The reports led to speculation that Biden aides had approved of executive orders and sweeping pardons, not the president.
The Trump administration latched onto the findings, with Trump issuing repeated warnings that “whoever controlled the autopen controlled the presidency,” while also remarking, “I think it’s the biggest scandal maybe of the last 100 years in this country.”
TRUMP TO VOID ALL DOCUMENTS ALLEGEDLY SIGNED BY BIDEN VIA AUTOPEN, THREATENS PERJURY CHARGE
Trump announced earlier in December that he would terminate all documents allegedly signed by the Biden autopen.
“The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in December, adding that roughly 92% of documents from the Biden era were signed by the autopen. “The Radical Left Lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him.”
The House and Senate launched parallel efforts scrutinizing Biden’s use of an autopen, with House Oversight and Government Reform Chair James Comer, R-Ky., leading the charge in the House, and the Senate Judiciary holding the “Unfit to Serve: How the Biden Cover-Up Endangered America and Undermined the Constitution” hearing in June.
Comer released a report in October on the committee’s findings while calling on the Department of Justice to conduct a review of all executive actions Biden signed during his four years in the Oval Office. The investigation focused on whether Biden’s inner circle of aides covered up signs of mental decline, and if the alleged cover-up extended to executive actions signed via autopen without Biden’s awareness.
The investigation included interviews with those in Biden’s inner circle, including his former White House physician Kevin O’Connor, former White House staff secretary Neera Tanden, former White House chief of staff Ron Klain and others.
The report stated: “Faced with the cognitive decline of President Joe Biden, White House aides — at the direction of the inner circle — hid the truth about the former president’s condition and fitness for office.”
COMER CALLS FOR BIDEN PARDONS TO BE ‘NULL AND VOID’ AFTER SCATHING REPORT ON AUTOPEN USE
“The Biden Autopen Presidency will go down as one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. As Americans saw President Biden’s decline with their own eyes, Biden’s inner circle sought to deceive the public, cover-up his decline, and took unauthorized executive actions with the autopen that are now invalid,” Comer added in October.
House Democrats issued a rebuttal response to the investigation’s findings, responding that there was no evidence of wrongdoing or that Biden was unfit for office.
“Following more than a year of inquiry, extensive witness interviews, and significant time and effort expended by both Republican and Democratic staff, the Oversight Majority has failed to produce any evidence to support their allegations against President Biden,” House Democrats responded.
Warrington added in his letter that “the available evidence to date establishes a sufficient factual predicate for Congress’ investigations.”
“Any American, save for those paid to cover the President as ‘reporters’, could see that President Biden struggled to perform his duties,” the White House counsel continued, taking a jab at reporters who overwhelmingly did not cover Biden’s health concerns until the height of the election.
JOHNSON ARGUES BIDEN PARDONS ‘INVALID’ AFTER BOMBSHELL AUTOPEN REPORT
“These are unique and extraordinary circumstances. Congress is examining an assault on the President’s constitutional duties, the civil liberties the Constitution provides all Americans, and the democratic institution of Congress itself. The constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself,” he added.
Concerns over Biden’s mental acuity have simmered for years, with conservatives sounding the alarm that it appeared the former Delaware senator’s mental edge was slipping before even the 2020 election cycle. Concerns over Biden’s health did not hit a fever pitch among the media and historical Democrat allies until June 2024, when the then-president delivered an abject failure of a presidential debate against Trump. Calls mounted among Democrats for Biden to drop out of the race in favor of a younger generation.
Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race via a tweet on a Sunday afternoon in July 2024, passing the torch to then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who failed to defeat Trump at the ballot box after campaigning for just over 100 days.
Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.
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