Joe Biden Criticizes Trump and Allies: "They're Liars, and They Know It" | Vanity Fair

Former president Joe Biden unloaded on Donald Trump and his allies in an interview published in The New York Times on Sunday, calling the president and the Republicans who support him “liars” who lie about both him and “everything they’re doing.”

Specifically responding to the investigation Trump ordered the Department of Justice to launch, into “whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the president” and used an autopen to push through clemency grants and executive orders the 46th president wouldn’t have necessarily agreed to, Biden said he made “every single” decision himself. He told the Times an autopen was used to sign clemency warrants because “we’re talking about a whole lot of people,” noted that the autopen is legal—and used by Trump himself—and insisted that Trump and company are claiming Biden was incapacitated and his aides used an autopen because “they’re liars. They know it. They know, for certain…. They’ve lied so consistently about almost everything they’re doing. The best thing they can do is try to change the focus and focus on something else. And this is a—I think that’s what this is about. It’s—you know—it’s consistent with Trump’s game plan all along.”

Commenting on his decision to issue preemptive pardons for members of his family—including his son, object of right-wing obsession Hunter Biden—the former president told the Times, “I know how vindictive [Trump] is. I mean, everybody knows how vindictive he is. So we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now. And my family didn’t do anything wrong. My sister, my brother-in-law, my—my brother, etc. And—and all it would do is, if they, if he went after them, would be, is run up legal bills. I just, I just know how he operates. And so I made—but I consciously made all those decisions, among others.”

Last week, Biden’s White House doctor invoked his Fifth Amendment rights during a deposition with the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee, which, in addition to the DOJ, has launched its own investigation into Biden’s use of the autopen. That unsurprisingly further fueled Republican claims of a cover-up, with committee chairman James Comer declaring, “It’s clear there was a conspiracy to cover up President Biden’s cognitive decline after Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician and family business associate, refused to answer any questions and chose to hide behind the Fifth Amendment.”

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