FIRST ON FOX: An energy watchdog group is calling on the Trump administration to investigate whether former President Joe Biden used an autopen to sign energy-related executive orders and if such actions “were instituted with the president’s knowledge.”
Power the Future, a pro-energy group, sent a letter to the attorney general’s office raising questions regarding the “propriety and legitimacy” of several major orders signed by the Democratic president during his term.
“In light of the mounting evidence of significant executive actions with serious economic and national and global security implications being undertaken in President Biden’s name apparently without his knowledge by unelected officials, we respectfully request that you investigate whether former President Biden authorized the LNG pause, or whether any documentation reflecting the White House’s position was instead prepared or signed by staff,” the group wrote in a letter to Bondi, shared first with Fox News Digital.
The letter comes after President Donald Trump declared Biden’s 11th hour pardons “void” over claims that they were signed by an autopen and that the former president “did not know anything about them.”
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Power the Future points to Biden’s January 2024 order pausing permits for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities and his ban on new drilling on 625 million acres of U.S. coastal and offshore waters – both orders that Trump immediately moved to lift after assuming office.
“In connection with recent revelations that many actions purportedly taken by the former president may not have been approved or signed by him, but instead promulgated over his signature using an ‘autopen,’ and especially in light of the Speaker’s public statements that Mr. Biden was not even aware of the LNG pause and the reporting that a particular White House ‘advisor’ was ‘the person behind [it,]’ it does not require a great leap to wonder whether the LNG pause was itself promulgated by an advisor with an autopen, rather than by the former President himself,” the group wrote.
The letter, raising concerns over the president’s knowledge of his executive orders, refers to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who, in January, shared that Biden, during a meeting, appeared to forget that he signed an order to pause LNG exports.
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“I cannot answer this from my constituents in Louisiana,” Johnson said he told Biden. “Sir, why did you pause LNG exports to Europe? Liquefied natural gas is in great demand by our allies. Why would you do that? Cause you understand we just talked about Ukraine, you understand you are fueling Vladimir Putin’s war machine, because they gotta get their gas from him.”
Biden, according to Johnson, responded by saying, “I didn’t do that.”
The letter also notes the involvement of John Podesta, the former White House senior advisor to the president for clean energy innovation and implementation, in the major decision to pause LGN exports.
In March 2024, a group of GOP lawmakers hand-delivered a letter to Podesta expressing concern over his “driving” the LNG pause.
Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office and the DOJ for comment.
The presidential autopen has been in focus this week after Trump claimed on Sunday that the courts must decide whether Biden’s use of an autopen for executive orders and pardons means they are void.
An autopen is a device that physically holds a pen and is programmed to replicate a person’s signature. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel determined in 2005 that the president is permitted to use an autopen to sign bills into law, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a ruling in February that said the absence of “a writing does not equate to proof that a commutation did not occur.”
The majority of official documents signed by Biden allegedly used the same autopen signature, reinvigorating concerns over the former president’s mental acuity and if he “actually ordered the signature of relevant legal documents,” a recent report published by an arm of the Heritage Foundation found.
Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy and Emma Colton contributed to this report
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