The Justice Department has reportedly abandoned a prospective case about the Biden administration’s use of an autopen, which President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have long alleged were part of a cover-up meant to hide his predecessor’s cognitive decline.
Veteran prosecutors were skeptical of the case to begin with and were unsure of what crime former President Joe Biden or his aides could be charged with committing, The New York Times reports, citing three unnamed people briefed on the probe.
The abandoned investigation, which began in 2025, marks the latest stumble in the president’s campaign to launch high-profile federal investigations against his political rivals.
Biden has said he “made every decision” under scrutiny by his critics, though he used an autopen, which are common for government officials, to sign some documents.
Trump has repeatedly claimed Biden’s actions, including his last-minute pardons of Biden family members including his son Hunter, are void as a result of the autopen allegations.
A Republican-led House report released in October claimed the autopen allegations ranked among the “greatest scandals” in American presidential history, though it conceded that “not one of the Committee’s 14 witnesses” did “admit that they ever had a concern about President Biden being in cognitive decline.”
The Constitution doesn’t require a pardons be in writing or be directly signed by the president, according to legal scholars.
Trump has hung a portrait of an autopen in Biden’s spot on a recently erected presidential “Walk of Fame” in a hallway at the White House.
Last month, the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which was handling the autopen investigation, reportedly failed to secure a grand jury indictment against a group of Democratic lawmakers targeted by Trump for making a 2025 video urging military members to resist illegal orders.
The office, led by Trump ally and former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, reportedly pushed investigators to rapidly seek an indictment in the video case, even as investigators had only recently held early-stage discussions with lawyers.
She also tapped two attorneys with scant experience in federal prosecution to help bring the case.
A former prosecutor who once worked in the U.S. attorney’s office has called Pirro’s failure to win a grand jury indictment, a rarity in federal court, a major shock.
“The average person doesn’t appreciate how stunning,” the official told Politico.
“The rules are skewed so heavily in favor of the prosecutor that it’s almost comical,” they added. “But the public is essentially saying, ‘We do not trust you. We are skeptical of you.’”
In Minnesota, meanwhile, the administration’s handling of the investigation into an ICE agent fatally shooting Renee Good in Minneapolis in January has prompted multiple federal prosecutors to resign.
The DOJ has also failed so far to win high-profile cases against Trump critics including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
