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The U.S. Constitution vests executive power in a single person, the President. At the founding, the President exercised the executive power through only a small group of trusted advisers and personnel. In fact, President Washington had a four-member cabinet. Today, the President directs a Leviathan executive branch with 15 cabinet departments and at least 4 million full-time executive branch employees. The executive branch proliferation has a single source of democratic legitimacy. That by order of U.S. Constitution's Article 2, the President is both elected by the American people and vested with the executive power, all of it. Traditionally, the President takes positive actions and authenticates those actions through his signature. His signature is required for the most significant actions he may undertake, to sign an executive order, to take any action invested in him by the Constitution, as in granting a pardon, and to take the most important action of all, to sign a bill into law. In all these cases, the President's signature is itself the protection of democratic principle. When the President signs, he communicates his assent and endorsement of the action he takes. The auto-pin is a device that signs the President's signature to a document. The oversight project, of which I am a board member, has discovered that the Biden White House deployed an auto-pin to affix President Biden's signature to pardons, prison commutations, executive orders, and presidential proclamations. The oversight project's research has found that the Biden White House first deployed the auto-pin to affix President Biden's signature to a proclamation on day five of his administration, and that there were at least three different auto-pin signatures in use throughout President Biden's tenure in the White House. In June 2022, the Biden White House began deploying the auto-pin to sign clemency warrants and executive orders. Auto-pin use skyrocketed from there. We found that of the 51 clemency warrants issued during the Biden presidency over half, 32 in total, were signed with an auto-pin. And these include some of the most controversial acts of clemency of the Biden presidency, including death row commutations, and the preemptive pardons of members of the Biden family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, and more that were issued in the final days of the Biden presidency. We reviewed President Biden's schedule and his publicly available media, and were unable to find any record of President Biden's personally approving these actions, such as a statement issued by the president himself to reporters. In addition, we found that the Biden White House used the auto-pin to affix President Biden's signature to clemency warrants and executive orders, while the president himself was in Washington, D.C., for at least some of that day, and thus was presumably available to sign important executive actions. Finally, we found multiple days where President Biden wetsigned a bill into law, but used an auto-pin to issue an executive order or for other important executive actions. The Biden White House's widespread use of an auto-pin to affix President Biden's signatures to documents that exercise executive power belonging solely to the president, causes significant constitutional, legal, and practical considerations. Once the president's signature is copied and loaded into the auto-pin, the machine can sign documents as the president himself would. To be blunt, by using the auto-pin, anyone can sign documents as the president himself. Now, to be clear, I'm not here today to suggest that the auto-pin is bad. It's just technology. I'm here today because of questions concerning President Biden's capacity and whether the auto-pin was used to usurp presidential power or to conceal the president's decline. As the sitting president's mental acuity declined, potentially to the point of incapacitation, his administration's expansion of the powers of the presidency raises more questions than answers. Any investigation into this matter should focus not only on whether President Biden directed or authorized subordinate staff to take action in certain instances, but whether he had the capacity to do so at all. The 25th Amendment lays out clear procedures for what to do when the president isn't capacitated. It was carefully drafted and informed by our nation's history. The Biden administration ignored it all to aggrandize executive power and push the country further in their preferred ideological direction. It is our obligation at this point to get to the bottom of these issues and to ask the important question as to whether or not the auto-pin and other devices were used to cover and obscure President Biden's mental decline, undermining our national security and also the Constitution.

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take on his strategy. Well, the president is committed to ensuring we have election integrity in this country and to stop all the fraud that we've been seeing in elections throughout the country. I'm the proud author of that bill. As you all know, in the House of Representatives, as you noted, we passed it three times. And look, the Senate is dealing with it. They're dealing with their filibuster rules. We called long ago last year that they should be modifying their rules or using what we call the talking filibuster to force things through. Now they haven't done that as they've navigated through other things. The president is trying to force them to take action to lead. Now, wherever they land on the save act, he's saying, Look, move it on fives if you need to move it on the housing bill if you need to. Let's talk about it in the form of any reconciliation bill we do. The president is rightly saying, Guys, figure it out. That's the way the president works. He's pragmatic. He wants to see us get stuff done. She's telling the Senate quit hiding behind things and figure out how to get this done. The truth is the American people want to see us deliver, whether it's the save act, whether it's codifying the border security provisions that the president's been putting in place that we put in H R two in the last Congress. We believe we should pass that. Send it to the Senate. Maybe we should pass the stock trading ban, of which I'm also the proud author of the first bill that did that. Let's ban members of Congress from enriching themselves while they're in Congress. There are things that the American people expect us to do. The president is right to tell Congress to get off its behinds and get stuff done for the American people.

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>> Consumer confidence is surging, blue collar wages are rising rapidly. >> Wages are rising, inflation is cooling and American confidence is surging back. >> Real wages, real take home pay for workers is increasing. >> Wages are actually rising faster than inflation for the first time in 40 years under Trump. >> You're able to buy more, you're able to do more. >> The average worker is up about $1,000, that's a lot in just five months. >> Real wages increased almost 1% from January through July. >> Real wages are up 1.3% over last year and have increased each month since President Trump took office. >> Blue collar wages are rising faster than they have risen in 60 years. >> The only other time it's been this high was during President Trump's first term. >> This administration continues to be wholeheartedly committed to putting more money back into the American people's pockets.

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in the United States Constitution is its first three beautiful words. They are we the people. Generations of Americans have sacrificed to maintain the promise of those words. The promise of our country and of our great history. In America the people govern, the people rule, and the people are sovereign. I was elected not to take power but to give power to the American people where it belongs. In foreign affairs we are renewing this founding principle of sovereignty. Our government's first duty is to its people, to our citizens, to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values. As President of the United States I will always put America first.

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President Trump got the 5% last year in the Hague which powers us forward. He said you did it sir, you did it. I don't know of any American president in the modern era who could have made this possible. And what we accomplished last year in the Hague now has to turn into real capabilities. The United States is leading the way and we expect others to follow us and follow our lead. And no other president is going to do what I'm doing. Ultimately the summit for NATO is going to be the first report card after last year's meeting in the Hague. The United States will be here but we also need our allies to be here. We cannot do it alone and the American taxpayer should no longer bear the burden. You're watching history, so buckle up.

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You know, I met the head of Somalia, did you know that? And I suggested that maybe he'd like to take her back. He said, "I don't want her." (laughter)

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He's got to call him up on foxnews.com. He says that Chief Justice John Roberts has to bring in the FBI here to try to find these leakers. He writes in part, quote, "For the future of the court and the faith of the public, Roberts has to set his reservations aside and bring in the FBI to find the culprit. Most importantly, he has to guarantee total transparency and allowing the public to see the results wherever they may lead." Molly, we've got about 30 seconds left. Final word to you here. Do you agree with Jonathan? If you do not punish people for breaking the norms and the procedures and maybe even the laws that are governing the court here, you're going to see more of that. And the failure to really do a good investigation for the Dobbs leaker, I think we're seeing the fallout right now.

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My last job in the Navy was in the SEAL teams. My job was to train and coach SEALs on the West Coast on how to do VBSS, so a little bit of experience with what you guys are doing, and I appreciate, I know that's a very complicated mission set, and I appreciate all the hard work that you guys do. Admiral, I want to ask you if you believe that the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, under Article II of the Constitution, has brought executive powers for maritime security. Do you recognize that, sir? Yes, yes, I recognize that. Do you recognize that the President may direct maritime interdictions when enforcing sanctions or national security measures, Admiral? Yes, I do, we follow that. Okay, so one of the things that's concerned me as a former service member myself is a video that was made by Senator Mark Kelly and several other senators who, just a couple months ago, they made a video to tell service members that they don't need to follow unlawful orders. Admiral, are you familiar with this video? I have not seen the video itself. I was following the news story, obviously, and the escalation of the-- It made national news, did it not, Admiral? It did, indeed. Did you or any of the other high-ranking Coast Guard officers that you work with fear that a video like that might undermine your chain of command? From my standpoint, I have found that our service members will follow lawful orders if they, you know, as given. I find it interesting, Admiral, that I didn't see any videos made like that from members of Congress during the Biden administration. I wanna submit an article for the record. This is from CNN. Biden finalizes new rules for U.S. drone strikes. President Joe Biden has signed a long-awaited classified policy tightening the rules for the CIA and Pentagon to carry out deadly drone strikes and commando raids conducted outside of traditional war zones, U.S. officials said on Friday. This was October 7th, 2022. Did you notice that no members of Congress, including Senator Kelly, made any videos during this time, Admiral? - I'm not familiar with that article. - 'Cause you didn't see any videos, did you? I didn't. - Not that I recall, no. - As service members, we tend to follow these types of things, right? - Yes. - Yeah. I found that very interesting that they weren't making videos during that timeframe about whether or not service members follow lawful orders or not. - And I think we all know that, right, Admiral? Don't we get that training and basic training that we're not supposed to follow unlawful orders? - Absolutely. And at all the session sources, that is what we train our personnel. - Yeah, so did you find that video a little bit odd knowing that we all know that? - I find that it's, you know, for me, as I reflect on it, I think it's unnecessary. I think our personnel will know to follow lawful orders and to question unlawful orders. - Yeah, that's what I thought too. Admiral, you guys, Congress delivered for you guys in a pretty big way during the reconciliation package, is that correct? - That is absolutely correct. - We gave you about $25 billion, is that correct? - Yes, generational change for the Coast Guard, Congressman. - And you guys had about seven billion in maintenance backlog for infrastructure, is that correct? - Yes, that's correct. - Do you, how do you see the Coast Guard deploying that money to make sure that the Coast Guard is ready to carry out the nation's national security and homeland security needs in the next couple of years? - We, under Force Design 28, Congressmen, we have reorganized to ensure that the Coast Guard can obligate all of those funds quickly. We're not waiting for the five years that they're available to us. We wanna spend those right away on maintenance, on shore infrastructure, to get after the problems that we have. - Thank you. My last question for you, Admiral, is do you feel in the last couple months with the boat strikes and everything else going on, do you feel like you have given orders to your men to carry out any of these strikes, any of these interdictions that have been deemed unlawful? - The Department of War has had the lead to these kinetic strikes. The Coast Guard has not been involved with them, so I can answer that we have not, I have not felt that way at all.

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