“Let’s find out, did he actually authorize it?” Hawley declared. “This is a binary question.”
During the hearing, Hawley pressed Former Deputy Assistant to the President Theodore Wold on whether the law requires a president’s direct consent before an autopen can be used.
“Autopen means not signed by the person. Auto pen is basically push of a button and it gets signed,” Hawley explained. “OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] says only when the President specifically directs it and it is under his direct authorities. Do I basically have that right?”
“That’s correct, Senator,” Wold responded.
Wold clarified that if the Biden White House followed standard protocol, there should be a paper trail such as memoranda or briefing books from the staff secretary and other offices documenting Biden’s assent. But no such documentation has been made public.
“None of that has come forward that would be very easy to dispel some of these concerns,” Wold testified. “That would be very easy to dispel some of these concerns.”
Hawley seized on that point: “Actually, we can find out.”
He continued: “I call on former President Biden and his staff. Release the documents. You have them. You know you have them. Release them. If what you did is legal, and if you are really not embarrassed about it and you think it was totally constitutional, release the paper flow. Show us the documents where the President authorized the use of the pen for every single pardon and clemency and stay application.”
The senator further warned the White House to comply voluntarily. “If you will not do it, we should subpoena those documents, and we should find out the truth of who was really running the White House, because I think we can see it was not Joe Biden,” Hawley said.
Whether the Biden team will heed Hawley’s call remains unclear, but the senator made one thing certain: “Let’s see all of it.”
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