When Should Vice President Act for Mentally Incapacitated President?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns former President Joe Biden, his cognitive deterioration, and the use of the autopen during his presidency. The House Oversight Committee investigated the situation and recently released a major report on its findings. Jarrett Stepman at The Daily Signal shared the following information. 

“In the absence of sufficient contemporaneous documentation indicating that cognitively deteriorating President Biden himself made a given executive decision, such decisions do not carry the force of law and should be considered void.”

That was what a major report released Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee concluded about former President Joe Biden’s autopen usage during his presidency. The report on Biden’s mental acuity while in office and his autopen use was spearheaded by Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.

The committee’s report notes that the Biden administration “left no record demonstrating President Biden himself made all of the executive decisions that were attributed to him.”

It seems Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Republicans agree with the committee’s conclusions.

The conclusions about Biden’s executive decisions being “void” mean there will soon be very serious legal challenge to the orders Biden gave, but didn’t verify, while in office. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X that her office has “already initiated a review” of Biden’s autopen usage and thanked Comer for his detailed report.

To a certain extent, the Oversight Committee has simply confirmed what most Americans already knew. That is, Biden was clearly in severe mental and physical decline from the time he was elected and struggled to handle the basic duties of office. One didn’t need to be a doctor or have insider information to know that. It was obvious nearly every time he made a public appearance.

What the report has done is shine a light on some of the inner workings of the Biden White House. The report pains a damning picture – one could even call it a conspiracy – of how Biden’s aides, both formal and informal, manipulated their position to secure executive orders, pardons, and clemencies that the president may have had no knowledge of.

In one example of how decisions were made in the White House, the report highlighted the process that led to a series of pardons as Biden was leaving office. Among these pardons were Biden family members, including his son, Hunter. Biden had said earlier in his presidency that he wouldn’t pardon his son.

The Oversight Committee report says that no official documentation exists regarding how the pardon judgments were made. Instead, the decision to grant these pardons was handed down by “second hand” to the second in command under Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients, Rosa Po. After receiving the list, Po called Zients, “who verbally authorized the use of the autopen from home.”

The report said that Zients “did not even know who actually used the autopen to apply the signature after his aide, using his email account with his permission, communicated that the autopen was authorized for the clemency actions.” Zients allegedly went ahead with the autopen pardons without confirming anything with the president.

Stepman said, “It couldn’t be clearer now that Biden was simply the figurehead of a deep state presidency.” Most Americans with eyes to see already knew that Biden was not in charge, and that someone else was giving the orders. Biden would be propped up for public appearances, but he was not making the decisions. We know this is true because he made comments about not being allowed to take questions and being in trouble for doing so. Who was ordering the President of the United States around?

After writing “Biden’s final days certainly seemed a lot more like a late-stage monarchy to me” than the object of the complaints of the “No Kings” protests – President Donald Trump, Stepman continued his article:

The Oversight Committee report brings up another potential long-term issue. While it’s unlikely that the United States will soon again experiment with putting a man in steep mental decline in the president’s office, it’s not impossible that a situation of a missing-in-action president might arise again in the future.

Given the immense power the executive branch yields, it would perhaps be wise to regularize the process by which executive actions are verified….

The autopen business remains a big deal because it’s tied to one of the most significant scandals in American presidential history: the cover-up and denial of Biden’s mental decline while in office.

Because of this cover-up, the American people can’t be certain that official acts by the president were his acts at all, so we’ve been thrown into an unprecedented legal situation of deciding what he did that was valid and what was potentially “void.”

I agree that it would “be wise to regularize” the verification of signing of executive orders. With transparent presidents, it is not a big deal. We can watch as President Trump signs and discusses executive orders in front of cabinet members and members of the Press. However, the lack of transparency in the Biden presidency should be a warning to us.

History tells us that Biden is not the first incapacitated President of the United States. This site shares the following information. The First Lady Who Secretly Ran The U.S. Government - History and Headlines

From October 2, 1919 and for some weeks afterwards, First Lady Edith Wilson (October 15, 1872 – December 28, 1961) unofficially ran the U.S. government following her husband’s (then President Woodrow Wilson’s) life-changing stroke….

On that date, Wilson suffered a stroke of such intensity that it incapacitated him, having permanently paralyzed the left side of his body and even blinding his left eye. While he was bedridden for the next two months, only his wife, physicians, and a few other close associates saw him.

In the meantime, the First Lady in effect took over many of the president’s responsibilities, including reviewing various important matters of state. Even after the president was released from his sick bed, he still spent the remainder of the year in a wheelchair. As 1920 came about, his mental health had clearly deteriorated as his mind wandered and he exhibited a diminished memory. Thus, the First Lady continued to play a pivotal role as a sort of unofficial “acting president”. As the First Lady put it, she had taken on a “stewardship” to care for the largely incapacitated president and keep the American government running as smoothly as possible. The situation was so unique in American history and the president’s condition so tragic, that the extent of what the ailing president endured was kept secret from the American public until his death a couple of years after his term ended.

Knowing how both Nancy Reagan and Jill Biden protected their husbands, I can totally understand Edith Wilson doing the same. However, where was the Vice President in all three situations. We know that Vice President George Bush was acting president while Reagan underwent surgery after he was shot. We also know that Kamala Harris was part of the Biden cover-up. What do we know about Wilson’s VP? I did a bit of research to learn the following. Thomas R. Marshall - Wikipedia

Thomas Riley Marshall (March 14, 1854-June 1, 1925) was the 28^th vice president of the United States from 1913 to 1921 under President Woodrow Wilson….

Marshall’s vice presidency is most remembered for a leadership crisis following a stroke that incapacitated Wilson in October 1919. Because of their personal dislike for Marshall, Wilson’s advisers and wife Edith sought to keep him uninformed about the president’s condition to prevent him from assuming presidential powers and duties. Many people, including cabinet officials and congressional leaders, urged Marshall to become acting president, but he refused to forcibly assume Wilson’s powers, not wanting to set a standard of doing so….

Lawmaking Powers

The eighth principle of the United States Constitution is found in Article I.1.1 (Article I, section 1, paragraph 1). This principle is: All legislative or lawmaking powers granted by this Constitution shall be vested exclusively in the Congress of the United States. This principle means that we as the people of the United States have the Right to expect the majority of our representatives to review and approve every proposal before it becomes a federal law. Our Founding Fathers made the law-making procedure as safe and secure as they could possibly make it. "Their legacy to future generations included a series of highly significant guidelines for Congress" (W. Cleon Skousen in The Making of America - The Substance and Meaning of the Constitution, p 250). Skousen included a list of the safeguards desired by the Founders: 1) "Federal laws should be few in number," 2) "Each law should be written in simple, non-technical language," 3) The House had the responsibility to "scrutinize proposed laws as the representatives of the people," 4) The Senate had the responsibility to "scrutinize new laws as the representatives of the states, 5) The President had the responsibility to scrutinize "new laws from a national viewpoint, 6) "The Courts must scrutinize new laws in terms of the Constitution." Skousen continued, "With so much good advice concerning the lawmaking process, it was no doubt expected that the proper procedure would remain strictly within its prescribed limits, particularly in view of the statement in Article I, section 1, that ALL lawmaking authority would be vested exclusively in the Congress. However, that is not what happened" (The Making of America, p 251). The Founders intended that each state would remain sovereign in its responsibilities and that the Federal government would stick to its own responsibilities. Congress gradually passed laws that encroached on the rights of the states, and both the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch began "writing laws" in their own unique ways. Since 1887, requirements known as "administrative law" has been issued by various governmental agencies. These "administrative laws" are enforceable in the courts just like laws made by Congress. In addition, Presidents have taken to writing executive orders, which are also enforceable in the courts. Executive orders started as administrative orders to the government agencies but did not affect the public. These executive orders gradually increased in number and influence. An example of how gradual they grew is a comparison between the 71 executive orders written by President Grover Cleveland and the 51 issued by President William McKinley with the 1,006 issued by President Theodore Roosevelt. By January 1985, the official count of executive orders numbered 12,498, and there have been many written since that time. The Founders required that all treaties with foreign governments be approved by the Senate, but Presidents began making secret executive agreements with foreign nations. The Yalta Agreement in 1945 between President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin is an example of the agreements made. Neither the Senate nor the American people know today all the commitments made by Roosevelt at Yalta. The Judicial Branch also got into the act of "writing laws." The courts would take authority from Congress to do "judicial legislation" or authority from the Executive Branch to do "judicial administration." It is obvious that all three branches of the Federal Government have a difficult time sticking to the Constitution! The Founders provided two means of safety for the lawmaking process, whether the laws are made by Congress or the courts. The first way gave the state legislatures power to reverse decisions made by Congress or courts by calling for a convention to amend the Constitution. This regulation was written in such a way that neither Congress nor the courts could prevent it. Alexander Hamilton said, "In the fifth article of the plan [as provided in the Constitution], the Congress will be obliged on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states to call a convention for proposing amendments which shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof." Hamilton continued, "The Words of this article are peremptory [mandatory]. The Congress `shall call a convention.' Nothing in this particular [provision] is left to the discretion of that body…. We may safely rely on the disposition of the state legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority" (as quoted in The Making of America, p 256). The second means of safety for the people was the common jury. This was thought by the Founders to be the most powerful weapon of defense against abusive government - but the Supreme Court took away half of its power in 1895. Since that time the people do not have the right to judge the law. If the people of the United States are to regain control of the Federal government, the "first safety net - the power of the state legislatures to call a convention and reverse the Congress and the courts - must become operational. As of 1985 it has never been used. This device could then be employed to restore the powers of the common-law jury. After that a carefully structured "New Bill of Rights" could be submitted to a constitutional convention, which would restore the original genius of a divided, balanced, and limited government as envisioned by the Founders…. We must have a generation of Americans who believe in the Founders' original success formula and who have the ingenuity and grit to restore it as the Founders initially planned it" (The Making of America, p 257). I have not found any indication that a constitutional convention has ever been held, but I did read somewhere that one was threatened until Congress approved one of the Amendments that we now have. This health care bill that is currently working its way through Congress may just be the one that forces a constitutional convention. I do not know of a simple way to teach this principle to children because I am having a difficult time getting my own brain around this concept - or at least why we are having problems with it today. I believe that we can put the blame for this problem on the progressive movement also since the bigger problems have come about in the past hundred years since the progressive movement began.