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🌱Nard🙏's avatar

There is no scenario where that act is not unlawful. There is no scenario where the Biden White House Staff can be presumed not to have known that act would be unlawful.

Did that happen during the Biden Presidency?

YES!

just as we did NOT need a $20 million study to know men think Republicans are strong and Democrats are weak, we don’t need an investigation to know that this is illegal behavior by the White House staff. But we DO need one to prosecute and undo all of the damage that has been done. This should be a slam dunk. It won’t be, it will be a fight to the finish…and hopefully the ball will make its way into to basket in the end.

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Peter Nayland Kust's avatar

The great challenge is going to be making a prosecutable case.

There are two questions that are going to be challenging to resolve as a matter of law:

1. What constitutes a valid authorization to use the Autopen?

2. Was a valid authorization given in each instance?

While public opinion particularly among the MAGA Coalition is that Joe Biden was clearly cognitively incapacitated, what is not certain is the legal sufficiency of the publicly known information. At this time Joe Biden is still presumed to be legally competent, and will remain so until a judge rules otherwise.

Can such a ruling be made on the strength of what is publicly known? Good question.

If such a ruling can be made on the strength of what is publicly known, the question then arises as to the duty of care owed by the White House staff. Ethically, they clearly should have pushed for the 25th Amendment to be invoked. Tapper and Thompson make that clear. Did they have a legal duty to do so?

If they did not have that duty of care, was it criminal for them to rely on verbal authorization from Biden to use the Autopen? We can safely assume that everyone in the White House will say Biden verbally authorized the Autopen, and the challenge for the prosecutors will be to prove he did not.

Politically, it seems clear that Presidential authority was abused during Biden’s Reign of Error. That understanding does not make a criminal case any easier to make. If anything, it makes it harder.

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