The former US president’s last executive orders may have been “unconstitutional” due to his cognitive decline, Missouri’s Andrew Bailey has said
The last executive orders and pardons issued by former US President Joe Biden could be “null and void” or even outright “unconstitutional,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has claimed. He has requested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) launch an investigation into Biden’s activities in his last months in office.
“Unelected staff” members of the former president’s administration could have exploited his mental state to promote what Bailey called “radical” policies without the president being fully aware, the attorney general argued in a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz that he published on X.
“I am demanding the DOJ investigate whether President Biden’s cognitive decline allowed unelected staff to push through radical policy without his knowing approval,” Bailey wrote on Wednesday in a post accompanying the letter. “If true, these executive orders, pardons, and all other actions are unconstitutional and legally void,” he added.
Bailey pointed to what he called “the streak of extraordinary far-left orders purportedly issued by Biden” in the last months of his term. The list compiled by Bailey included Biden granting his son Hunter a retroactive blanket pardon after vowing not to do so, as well as making a “legally frivolous” claim that the Equal Rights Amendment was part of the US Constitution.
The amendment explicitly prohibiting sex discrimination was first introduced to Congress in 1923 and later reintroduced and approved by both the House and the Senate in 1970s. However, enough states did not ratify it before the deadline and the amendment was considered expired.
“There are profound reasons to suspect” that Biden was manipulated by his staff, Bailey said, citing some former and current US officials, as well as a prominent Democratic fundraiser who had previously spoken about the former president’s cognitive issues.
According to the attorney general, House Speaker Mike Johnson recently said that Biden was unable to understand the orders he was signing and confused a moratorium on energy exports to Europe with a decree authorizing a study of those exports.
A major Democratic National Committee fundraiser, Lindy Li, stated last month that “the people who ran our country for the last four years” were Biden’s staff, as well as his wife and son Hunter.
The DOJ has not commented on Bailey’s request.
Questions about Biden’s physical and mental fortitude plagued his campaign against Trump in 2024. He was eventually forced to drop out of the race under pressure from his own party a hundred days before the election following his poor performance at a CNN-hosted debate with Trump this past June.
