Trump orders inquiry into Biden’s actions as president over ‘cognitive decline’ reports

Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into Joe Biden’s actions as president, alleging that top aides masked his predecessor’s ‘cognitive decline’.

This investigation will build on a Republican-led campaign to discredit the former president and overturn some of his executive actions, including presidential pardons and federal rules issued toward the end of his term in office, that’s already underway.

GOP lawmakers sought testimony from five of Biden’s top aides and advisers Wednesday, including his first chief of staff, about his “mental and physical faculties”. The House oversight committee, headed by the Republican representative James Comer of Kentucky is already speaking to four others, according to reports from CBS News.

A separate inquiry was launched Tuesday by Ed Martin, a Department of Justice attorney, into clemencies Biden issued in his final days in office to family members as well as death row inmates.

Biden’s cognitive abilities during his presidency had been a Republican talking point for several years andTrump has frequently suggested that some of Biden’s actions are invalid because his aides were usurping presidential authority to cover up what Trump claims is Biden’s cognitive decline.

Biden, 82, is not significantly older than Trump who turns 79 later this month, and has also faced questions about cognitive decline. But scrutiny about Biden’s health intensified following a disastrous debate performance going into the 2024 election, which ultimately led to him dropping out of the race.

Concerns about his age and mental acuity have come into sharper focus in recent weeks following the disclosure that the former president was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Reporting in numerous US media outlets and a recent book co-authored by Jake Tapper, a CNN host, have also revealed that top Democrats and people in Biden’s inner circle had serious misgivings about his ability to do the duties of president. The book is referenced in an announcement about the House oversight committee’s expanded inquiry.

In a memo, Trump took aim at Biden’s use of an autopen – a mechanical device that is used to replicate a person’s authentic signature, that presidents have used for decades – to sign executive actions. The administration’s investigation will focus on “who ran the United States while President Biden was in office”, according to the memo.

“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump wrote. “The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”

Trump directed Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Pam Bondi and David Warrington, the White House counsel, David Warrington to handle the investigation.

Democrats, meanwhile, have called the investigations a distraction from issues with current administration. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning the former president Bill Clinton said he believed Biden was mentally sound.

“The only concern I thought he had to deal with was: ‘Could anybody do that job until they were 86?’” Clinton said. “We’d had several long talks. I had never seen him and walked away thinking ‘He can’t do this anymore.’”