'Ask him!' Jan. 6 chair hammers Trump for doing same thing he condemns Biden for

WASHINGTON – Dismissing President Donald Trump’s claim that preemptive pardons Joe Biden gave members of the House January 6 committee are invalid if Biden used an autopen to sign them, the senior Democrat who chaired that panel and received such a pardon doubted whether Trump himself signed all pardons he gave supporters who carried out the Capitol attack.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told Raw Story: “Ask him! Did he sign all 1,500 pardons?”

Trump and Republican allies claim aides to Biden used an autopen to sign documents as the then president was too old and infirm to wield a pen himself.

This week, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate.

Democrats dismiss the move as political theater.

Thompson said: “It's just a distraction. The autopen has been around for a good while.”

Experts agree, and reporters have pointed out that presidential autopen use is long established, with Trump himself having used such devices.

Nonetheless, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer has subpoenaed Biden’s doctor for testimony on matters including “potentially unauthorized issuance of sweeping pardons and other executive actions,” suggesting drama to come.

Speaking to Raw Story, Thompson defended his decision to push for preemptive pardons.

“One of the reasons I was a public advocate for pardons is that I know what Trump and the people around him are capable of doing,” Thompson said.

“If we had not received a pardon, there's no question what we'd be faced with. And the members didn't deserve it, and the staff or the committee didn't deserve it.”

Thompson and his January 6 vice-chair, the former Republican Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, were among those who received the pre-emptive pardons Trump now wants to void.

The president and his allies also claim members of the bipartisan House committee destroyed evidence that did not support their view of the attack on Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, which Trump incited as he tried to overturn his 2020 defeat by Biden.

Thompson told Raw Story: “All this stuff about, ‘Well, they did away with stuff and all that’ — where is it? So prove it. They can't. We went to great lengths to preserve everything consistent with what the law required.”

“I think the only thing left is to try to somehow discredit the process. You know, we were created by the House, charged with doing a job. We did it, our committee [closed], and that was it.”

The January 6 attack is linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides.

It produced hundreds of convictions but after Trump returned to the White House this year he issued pardons and acts of clemency even for people convicted of violent offenses and crimes as serious as seditious conspiracy.

Thompson told Raw Story: “I think in America, when you see people break into this great building [the Capitol], some who pled guilty, others who went to court, and then you do a mass pardon saying they, in fact, were the victims — it's a sad commentary for democracy.”

Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress have refused to display a plaque made to commemorate police officers who defended the Capitol, including some who died after the riot.

Thompson said Republicans were “always talking about ‘Back the Blue,’ right? But a couple of [officers] lost their lives, 140-odd got hurt. A number of them had to go out on disability retirement.

“And so it's come to this. It all boils down to Trump’s stranglehold on the party.”

Trump has also stirred controversy by vowing to pay $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by an officer as she and other rioters tried to break into the House chamber.

“I was in there when she got shot,” Thompson said. “I was up in the gallery. And so this whole notion that, ‘I can break in, I can get shot, breaking the law, putting everybody at risk,’ and there’s a $5 million payment, for law enforcement doing their job?

“God knows, if they hadn't done their job, I don't know what would have happened.”