A constitutional expert publicly is calling for full support for a review ordered by President Donald Trump of the coverup of Joe Biden’s “obvious deterioration.”
It is Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University professor who not only has counseled Congress on constitutional issues but represented members in those fights, who said there are “ample reasons” for Americans to get answers “as we continue to struggle with the problem of presidential incapacity.”
He pinpointed the moment that should have been a “wake-up call” regarding the “obvious deterioration” seen in Joe Biden as his presidency progressed from a campaign built on videos filmed in his basement to his long history of verbal gaffes, blunders and mental failures on exhibit from his White House term.
“‘Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?’ When then-President Joe Biden asked in September 2022 if House Rep. Jackie Walorski, an Indiana Republican who had died weeks earlier in a car accident, was in a meeting, observers were shocked. Biden had not only issued a statement of condolence; he had attended the congresswoman’s memorial service to lower the flags at the White House in her honor,” Turley explained.
“As Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple noted last week, that moment should have been a wake-up call. In Washington parlance, it left no room for ‘plausible deniability’ about whether Biden was still fit to hold the office of president. And it wasn’t just Democratic politicians who were willfully blind to Biden’s obvious deterioration; it was the media, too.”
He pointed out that’s why all the nation should “fully support President Donald Trump’s June 4 order for his administration to investigate Biden’s competence and answer some of these questions, including the possible abuse of an autopen to sign legislation, pardons and other documents while he was president, instead of looking for political motivations.”
Turley noted the House Oversight Committee also is conducting an investigating.
He cited the New York Times’ claim the investigation was Trump’s “campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies” but pointed out that was “a weird dissonance when journalists blame Biden’s White House for a coverup, but then criticize efforts to investigate that coverup.”
He conceded criminal charges are not likely to result, but investigation could end up with “forgery, obstruction of justice, fraud or other serious crimes” if the autopen was used without Biden’s express authorization.
He cited the stroke sustained by President Woodrow Wilson a century back, and said Americans must have “accountability and greater transparency on matters of presidential health and competence.”
While the 25th Amendment allows for a specific response to the incapacity of a president, it does not work when “staff have an interest in maintain the illusion to keep the president and themselves in power.”
The worst thing, he said, for America “would be a collective shrug and a resumption of business as usual.”
He said, “Biden was kept on a reduced schedule, allowing him to rally for single events. That is the difference between a major stroke and creeping cognitive decline. The 25th Amendment was designed for catastrophic medical events, not the slow slide to senility.”
However, “The result for the office can be largely the same.”
