Trump Flails to Take Down Biden Over Autopen Pardons
A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.
Too ridiculous for words
President Trump’s continued desire to sue former President Joe Biden over a MAGA fever dream — White House staffers’ alleged use of the autopen to issue pardons while Biden was too demented to sign them himself — has apparently run into an intractable problem: “Investigators have never been very clear about what crime, if any, was committed by the Biden administration’s use of the autopen,” the New York Times reports in a typically understated style.
It’s not for lack of trying.
After Trump publicly called for Biden to be investigated, DCUS Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office took a chance, which is a scandal in itself. The effort was abandoned, according to the New York Times, just as Pirro was dismissed by a grand jury as she attempted to indict six Democratic lawmakers over a video reminding the military of their duty not to follow illegal orders.
“In the lawmakers’ auto-open and video cases, veteran prosecutors were skeptical from the start that there was enough evidence to support criminal charges, according to people familiar with the matter,” The New York Times reported.
The case for Biden’s alleged misuse of the autopen — which, in the MAGA cinematic universe, would have invalidated all of his pardons and commutations — was whipped up by Ed Martin, the acting DCUS attorney who later became the U.S. pardons attorney. But we shouldn’t focus too much on the clownish underlings when President Trump himself issued an official memorandum laying out his wild theory on the matter:
The vast majority of Biden’s executive actions were signed using a mechanical signature pen, often called an auto-open, as opposed to Biden’s own hand. This was especially true of actions taken during the second half of his presidency, when his cognitive decline had apparently become even more evident to those who worked most closely with him.
Unlike the Democratic lawmakers’ video, this self-opening investigation never went to the grand jury.
Oversight of Trump’s Justice Department
- Epstein Files: The GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about her handling of the DOJ’s Jeffrey Epstein files. Five Republicans joined Democrats on the committee to vote in favor of the subpoena: Reps. Tim Burchett (TN), Lauren Boebert (CO), Michael Cloud (TX), Scott Perry (PA), and Nancy Mace (R-SC), who proposed the subpoena.
- Bar investigations: The Trump administration is proposing a new federal regulation that purports to subordinate state bar investigations of DOJ lawyers to the attorney general’s own investigation.
- No-strike warrants: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reversed Biden’s DOJ policy that narrowly limited no-knock warrants following the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville.
Quote of the day
“It is much easier to lose institutional trust than to rebuild it. Once courts and the public begin to suspect selective enforcement or strategic defiance, credibility does not return with a few corrected briefs. It only returns through consistent, disciplined adherence to the law, demonstrated in case after case, year after year. It is unclear whether the department [of Justice] will one day be able to fully recover from the damage Bondi and company inflicted in just over a year.former US Attorney Harry Litman
Backlash against Polis in Colorado
In Colorado, the state attorney, state attorney general, secretary of state and a U.S. senator all reacted vehemently to Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’ signal that he would commute the sentence of election denier Tina Peters.
Latest news from the Middle East…
- Azerbaijan: In a context of widening conflict, Azerbaijan has promised to respond to what it considers to be Iranian drone strikes on its territory. Iran has denied responsibility for the strikes and blamed Israel.
- Watch: The WSJ visualizes the closure of the Strait of Hormuz after the start of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran.
- “Quiet death”: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the U.S. sinking of an Iranian navy destroyer a “quiet death,” the first combat torpedo launch by a U.S. submarine since World War II.
On the home front…
- The Senate voted largely along party lines not to end Trump’s Iran misadventure. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and John Fetterman (D-PA) were the only two senators to cross party lines.
- The shrill tone of a bully playing victim, which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wholeheartedly embraced, first appeared in American culture in the action films of the 1980s, following the Vietnam debacle. Watching him reach the highest levels of the Pentagon is a 40-year nightmare. Note in particular this quote from Hegseth from the clip below: “This was never supposed to be a fair fight, and it’s not a fair fight. We’re hitting them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”
- An example of what Don Moynihan calls “Clicktatorship,” where everything is a miasma of propaganda, disinformation, and AI-generated imagery that intentionally makes it difficult to know reality:
Real talk
WSJ: Russia is a big winner as Iran war drains supplies Ukraine needs
DOJ Appeals Again in AEA Case
Trump’s DOJ, as expected, appealed U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s Feb. 12 order directing the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return from third countries of former Alien Enemies Act detainees who want the due process they were denied when they were deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison a year ago this month. Last week, the ACLU informed Boasberg that 19 former detainees “wish to travel independently to a U.S. port of entry or wish to be flown from a third country to the United States for their legal proceedings, knowing that in either case they will be detained upon arrival.”
IMPORTANT
In a new ruling, U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker in Tallahassee issued a preliminary injunction blocking Gov. Ron DeSantis’ executive order declaring the Council on American-Islamic Relations a foreign terrorist organization. DeSantis also claimed to deny government benefits to “any person known to have provided material support or resources” to CAIR.
“The First Amendment prohibits the Governor from continuing the troubling trend of using an executive office to make a political statement at the expense of the constitutional rights of others,” Walker wrote.
2026 Ephemeral
- TX-Sen: President Trump announced on social media that he plans to support the Republican primary runoff for U.S. Senate and expects the other candidate to “drop out of the race immediately!” »
- MT-Sen: In a surprise move, Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) withdrew his filing materials to run for re-election moments before the filing deadline. Almost simultaneously, Montana U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme (R) filed to run for Daines’ seat. This deception left Alme as the only Republican candidate in the primary and gave Democrats no time to field a major challenger in the general election. Daines and Trump immediately supported Alme.
- TX-23: The House Ethics Committee belatedly launched an investigation into Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) the day after he was elected in the Texas Republican primary runoff. Hours after the committee’s announcement, Gonzales admitted to his affair with a former staffer (who later committed suicide) that is the subject of an ethics investigation and said God had forgiven him for his “mistake.”
Trumpian grotesque
An excellent 3D model of the White House complex shows the asymmetry in scale and design of Trump’s ballroom project, whose footprint “will dwarf both the executive residence and the West Wing,” the New York Times reports.
Any hot tips? A juicy scuttlebutt? Any interesting ideas? Let me know. For sensitive information, use encrypted methods here.
