A Kentucky Republican leading the Trump administration’s investigation into Joe Biden’s mental capacities during his time in office, including Biden’s reliance, like many other presidents, on an automatic signature machine, has been shown to have used a digital signature himself in the course of the investigation.
NBC reported that some letters and subpoena notices issued by James Comer, which were sent out in connection to his investigation into Biden’s use of the so-called autopen, bore a digital signature.
Comer has sent 16 letters to former Biden White House officials requesting transcribed interviews, NBC said. Metadata analysis showed that all appeared to be signed with a digitally inserted signature.
Further letters requesting testimony from the White House physician Dr Kevin O’Connor and Anthony Bernal, a senior aide to former first lady Jill Biden, were also signed with digital images, NBC said.
The actual subpoenas were not shared by the committee, which just released a photo of them instead.
The findings are likely to intensify the political battle over Biden’s use of the autopen. Donald Trump has claimed that his predecessor had little knowledge of what he was signing, including pardons, clemencies and executive orders, and that the autopen was controlled by “radical left” actors in the White House.
On Monday Biden ridiculed those accusations, telling the New York Times in his first on-the record interview with the paper since he was elected president in 2020 that he “made every decision” on his own.
“We’re talking about [granting clemency to] a whole lot of people,” he said, explaining why autopen was used on the thousands of pardons that were issued.
Trump himself has admitted using the autopen on some documents. Nevertheless, he attacked Biden again in the Oval Office during a meeting with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, saying: “I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing, I guarantee you.”
Trump has repeatedly pushed the autopen conspiracy theory to further the narrative that Biden was somehow not fully in command of his administration or its policies. Last month Trump ordered an investigation, calling it “one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history”. Biden has maintained that the allegations are “ridiculous and false”.
Comer’s apparent use of a digital signature now threatens to cloud Republicans’ efforts.
A spokesperson for the House committee on oversight and reform, the body Comer heads, said using a digital signature for correspondence was common practice.
“Chairman Comer has never hidden the fact that he uses a digital signature when appropriate, and he approves all official correspondence that is signed digitally,” a spokesperson for the committee told NBC News, but added that “legally binding subpoenas issued by Chairman Comer always bear a wet signature and are never signed using an autopen or digital signature.”
