Obama Birth Certificate Attorney Named as Biden “Gatekeeper”

by Sharon Rondeau

(May 27, 2025) — On May 21, the newly-appointed Department of Justice attorney overseeing presidential pardons, Edward Martin, discussed with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo the task of examining pardons and alleged government “weaponization” against certain individuals during the Biden years, particularly in the wake of the events of January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol.

Earlier this month Martin failed to garner enough support in the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation to the post of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Although Martin had served in the position on an interim basis since late January, “bipartisan” concerns arose over his previous advocacy for January 6 defendants and political activity.

At that juncture Trump withdrew Martin’s nomination and immediately appointed him pardon attorney and oversight of the newly-formed “Weaponization Working Group” announced in early February by Attorney General Pam Bondi just after her confirmation.

In a memo establishing the group and its purpose, Bondi decried what Trump claimed in his second inaugural speech to be “an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process” by the Biden regime.

The Department of Justice must take immediate and overdue steps to restore integrity and credibility with the public that we are charged with protecting, and to ensure that the Department’s personnel are ready and willing to faithfully implement the policy agenda of the duly elected President of the United States. These steps are required because, as President Trump pointed out following his second inauguration, “[t]he prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process.” Executive Order, Ending the Weaponization of The Federal Government (Jan. 20, 2025). Thus, “[t]he American people have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing the legal force of
numerous Federal law enforcement agencies and the Intelligence Community against those perceived political opponents in the form of investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions.”

The group will be tasked with probing the investigations and prosecutions conducted by then-Special Counsel Jack Smith; certain practices of the FBI; any “federal cooperation” which might have occurred with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James; “The pursuit of improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions relating to events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021”; and some of the actions of the Justice Department itself.

Martin further told Bartiromo that while acting U.S. Attorney, he was already looking into the pardons and “weaponization of government” matters.

While certain events could be non-prosecutable because of an expired statute of limitations, he continued, some offenses could be ongoing, making them potentially eligible for charges.

Bartiromo asked if the January 6 Select Committee “destroyed evidence” from its investigation, which Trump and others have asserted, to which Martin responded in the affirmative.

“How do they get away with destroying evidence…?” Bartiromo pressed.

“On the destruction of evidence, that’s again an example of something where we can maybe pull forward if we can find the evidence of that…,” Martin replied. He also floated the idea of offering “immunity” to witnesses in order to “come and tell the truth,” suggesting certain players during the “COVID era” could be among them. “I had a whistleblower in my office talking about some of these things about ten days ago exactly in this line,” he asserted.

Bartiromo asked if at the time some of the pardons were issued Biden was receiving treatment for his recently-revealed advanced-stage prostate cancer. “Now that we know Joe Biden was sick and he may have been sick while he was president and they were hiding it from us, what do you say about these pardons? Are they legitimate?” she asked.

“The Biden pardons are something we’ve never seen in history,” Martin responded. “Put it very simply…if I try to sell you a piece of real estate and I lie to you about it, you can get your money back from me and maybe I can go to jail for fraud. If I’m an agent for someone else and I engineer a deal and that turns out to be fraudulent, there’s a lot of questions. It looks a lot like Joe Biden didn’t know what he was doing…We need to know who was engineering the pardons, what were they engineering it for, were they getting paid for it, were they doing it to cover up their own crimes?…”

“The autopen, now — if you use that tool to engineer this — autopens are legal; that’s been established, but they’re not legal if the guy who were doing on behalf is not competent to do the deal…,” Martin added.

The presidential pardon power should be “protected,” he said, but that “perhaps a fraud on the American people” was committed.

The Pardons

Dating back to 2020 and even before, many observers questioned Biden’s cognitive state, and Trump has emphasized on numerous occasions that Biden never underwent a cognitive test which he, Trump, reportedly “aced.”

In a TruthSocial post in March, Trump alleged Biden not only did not sign certain pardons issued under his name, but also “did not know anything about them.”

In May, Trump went farther, contending Biden’s close circle “took over the Autopen” and “stole the Presidency of the United States,” placing the nation “in Great Danger.”

“This is TREASON at the Highest Level!” Trump wrote. “They did it to destroy our Country…”

Five pardons issued on January 19, 2025 excused Biden family members “for any nonviolent offenses against the United States which they may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon.”

Similarly, a pardon issued for former NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci reads, “For any offenses against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon arising from or in any manner related to his service as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House COVID-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President. “

Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley and “The Members of Congress who served on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (“Select Committee”); the staff of the Select Committee, as provided by House Resolution 503 (117th Congress); and the police officers from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department or the U.S. Capitol Police who testified before the Select Committee” also received “pre-emptive” pardons.

Late last year, Biden pardoned his son Hunter for his “guilty” plea on tax evasion in California and a Delaware conviction on falsely completing a federal firearms permit application. The elder Biden had on numerous occasions said he would not issue a pardon for his son.

The time frame for Hunter’s pardon spans nearly 11 years, from January 1, 2014 to December 1, 2024.

Biden’s Health

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden was often seen in videos produced in what was said to be the basement of his Delaware home, ostensibly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As stated previously, some close political observers opined that Biden could have been exhibiting signs of cognitive decline, while Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, in late 2019 claimed Biden was “a healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.”

In November 2021, then-White House physician O’Connor, who at that point had been Biden’s “primary care physician” for 13 years, noted Biden’s health challenges to be GERD treated with Pepcid; atrial fibrillation; elevated cholesterol treated with statins; seasonal allergies; “osteoarthritic changes” to the spine manifesting in a “stiffened gait”; and “mild peripheral neuropathy in both feet.”

The link to the medical report does not redirect for this writer from any of three sources, including from the Biden White House, although it is available on Scribd.

A “fracture in his right midfoot,” O’Connor wrote, “has healed nicely.”

“Skin cancer surveillance” was completed, O’Connor said, reporting Biden had “non-melanoma skin cancers removed with Mohs surgery before he started his presidency.”

At that time O’Connor alleged Biden to be “an active 78-year-old white male” who “works out at least five days per week” and was “fit for duty, and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations.”

In July 2022, Biden claimed to “have cancer” during an address in Somerset, MA on the environment. When observers questioned the statement, White House spokesman Andrew Bates referred to Washington Post columnist Glenn Kessler’s explanation of Biden’s past “non-melanoma skin cancers” which had been removed, according to O’Connor’s report.

A myriad of official events during his presidency show Biden with a faltering gait, frequent tripping, a complete fall while addressing a 2023 Air Force Academy graduation in Colorado, inaccurate stories as to his whereabouts at particular times, apparent confusion, seeking to shake hands with individuals not present, and calling upon public servants who were deceased.

A February 2024 medical exam report by O’Connor stated that following Biden’s 2023 exam, a “skin lesion” “found to be basal cell carcinoma” was removed.

New to Biden’s medical history, O’Connor reported, was “Obstructive Sleep Apnea” to be treated with “Positive Airway Pressure” (PAP) (page 2).

Much of the 2024 information is duplicative of O’Connor’s previous reports. However, that year a more specific physical therapy routine was described, with Biden reportedly “participating in this program four to five times a week.”

In both the 2021 and 2024 reports, O’Connor alleged a “neurological” workup was completed but not a cognitive test.

In his 2024 summary, O’Connor wrote that “President Biden is a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief.”

Biden Post-Presidency

Scrutiny of Biden’s cognitive state dating back to when he was in office intensified following the May 13 release of excerpts from a book, “Original Sin,” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios‘s Alex Thompson. In it, the authors allege a myriad of behind-the-scenes schemes in which Biden aides participated in an attempt to conceal his impairment through his ill-fated 2024 re-election campaign, forever memorialized by the fateful June 27, 2024 debate with Donald Trump.

On July 7, 2024, as speculation swirled about Biden’s fitness to serve the second term he was seeking, a Politico headline read, “Biden’s physician was also a family business associate.”

After weeks of speculation and mounting pressure to withdraw from the race, Biden acceded in a July 21 post on X, formerly Twitter, and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris.

Two days later, some reports said Biden suffered a medical emergency while preparing to speak in Las Vegas, NV and was clandestinely flown back to his home in Rehoboth Beach, DE.

On November 5, 2024, Harris lost resoundingly to Trump, the first Republican presidential candidate to win the electoral and popular votes since George W. Bush in 2004.

On May 18, 2025, Biden’s post-presidential office announced he has advanced prostate cancer which the American Cancer Society described on its website as “late-stage.”

According to media reports, citing his White House medical history, Biden had not been screened for prostate cancer since 2014.

The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center states that an early screening tool, the PSA test, is “rarely helpful” after age 75.

As Bartiromo suggested during her interview with Martin, some have raised the question as to whether Biden’s medical team was aware of the diagnosis while Biden served as president and whether possible treatment regimens could have affected his cognitive state.

The “Gatekeepers”

On May 22, former ABC political director, MSNBC commentator, co-managing editor of Bloomberg Politics, and founder of “2WAY” Mark Halperin hosted Martin and a lobbyist as guests.

Martin’s initial remarks focused on Trump’s choice of Jeanine Pirro, longtime co-host of Fox News’s “The Five,” former district attorney and judge in Westchester County, NY, to replace him as interim U.S. Attorney.

Martin said he believed Pirro would be confirmed by the Senate once the 120 days of her interim appointment expire and that he had advised her about the projects he undertook during his time in the position.

At 22:00, Halperin asked Martin about the use of “the autopen” during the Biden presidency, quoting from Trump’s “treason at the highest level” post.

“What evidence have you seen for the president’s accusation?” Halperin asked Martin.

“I was in office as U.S. attorney for about five days when I wrote to a number of senior Biden officials in the White House saying, ‘What did you know about Joe Biden’s competence and the pardons?’ and I got some responses,” Martin responded. “I think the question is more about competence. If you have someone who’s not competent, they can’t enter into a contract, right, and if you do enter into a contract, you’ve committed fraud…”

“The Biden pardons are unprecedented; the ones right before Christmas…,” he went on. “I think it’s a couple thousand pardons that were done. Did he know about that?…The pardon power is plenary, but the guy has to be competent to do it.”

Regarding the use of the autopen, Martin said that as acting U.S. attorney, he garnered “unprecedented admissions,” referencing the whistleblower mentioned to Bartiromo and revealing outreach he made to certain parties, “including the Biden family.”

“Did they reply or you just sent letters?”

“No, they didn’t,” Martin replied.

“What’d they say?” Halperin asked.

“A couple of them lawyered up and one of ’em wrote directly,” Martin said. “I won’t talk about what they said.”

“…Can you characterize who the whistleblower was…?” Halperin continued.

“Biden campaign, 2020 campaign, at the highest levels,” Martin replied.

“And who were the three people they said were –“

“The gatekeepers — different characterization of who was using the access — but the gatekeepers were (former White House Chief of Staff Ron) Klain, Anita Dunn, and Bob Bauer, and those three were really dominant characters in the White House,” Martin asserted. “(Steve) Ricchetti a little bit and obviously Jill, but I think that was the three — and I was with this g– well, person that I said, ‘What about Susan Rice? What about some of these others?’ and they said, ‘No, this was — and these were the ones.'”

The whistleblower, Martin later revealed to Halperin, “told me all about who was really running things in the White House…they were saying who was benefiting from control and access.”

In “Original Sin,” the authors referred to the unelected individuals allegedly at the helm of the Biden White House as “the politburo,” the New York Post reported Sunday. “Regardless of official titles in his 2020 campaign and administration, the ‘politburo’ generally called the shots and got Biden to agree,” the article states of the claims the authors made.

According to former Democrat bundler Lindy Li in February, the inner circle who “ran the country” consisted of “Steve Ricchetti. Anita Dunn. Mike Donilon. Ron Klain. Jeff Zients. Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal lawyer,” as reported by PJ Media.

In December, Li claimed that after the June 27 debate, Biden’s son Hunter, who received a wide-ranging pardon in December, “essentially took over White House operations.”

Oversight Committee Seeks O’Connor “Information”

On July 7, 2024, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY1) issued a press release and sent a letter to O’Connor requesting a transcribed interview about his alleged involvement in a business proposition with James Biden, Joe Biden’s brother, and his knowledge of Joe Biden’s state of health while in office.

As O’Connor did not comply, on May 22, 2025 Comer issued a second request for “information about your assessment of and relationship with former President Biden to explore whether the time has come for Congress to revisit potential legislation to address the oversight of presidents’ fitness to serve under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment…Please confirm your appearance as soon as possible but no later than May 29, 2025…”

Concurrently, the Committee is conducting its own investigation into the use of the Biden autopen and the broader question of what his inner circle knew about his cognitive state.

On May 22, Comer subpoenaed five Biden White House staffers, three of whom received subpoenas last July at the time of the O’Connor letter. Comer also subpoenaed the audio-recording of Biden’s interview with then-Special Counsel Robert Hur from October 2023 relative to Biden’s unauthorized possession of classified documents as a U.S. senator and following his service as Barack Obama’s vice president.

While Comer never received the recording, last week Axios released parts of it demonstrating an uncertain, halting Biden attempting to answer Hur’s questions and White House Counsel Robert Bauer at times supplying responses to Biden or speaking for him.

As Axios reported several months later in February 2024, Bauer said during an appearance on “Face the Nation” that Biden was not suffering from “any memory problems.”

Who is Robert Bauer?

Bauer and Dunn are married and have four children and three grandchildren, according to Bauer’s Wikipedia page.

In 1980, Bauer launched a “political law” division of the Perkins Coie law firm, which was founded in 1912 in Seattle. Perkins is the firm hired by the DNC and Hillary Clinton to perform “legal and compliance services during the 2016 campaign,” which included the commissioning of former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele to produce a “dossier” on Donald Trump’s alleged connections to Russia.

Years later, a special counsel investigation of the FBI’s probe into the 2016 Trump campaign predicated on the Steele dossier found the FBI acted without improperly.

Bauer was general counsel for “Obama for America” in both 2008 and 2012. In 2013, his bio states, Obama “named Bauer to be co-chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which in January 2014 submitted its findings and recommendations in ‘The American Voting Experience: Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration.'”

In 2020, Bauer co-wrote the book, “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency” as Trump sought re-election that year. The work reportedly offers “a comprehensive roadmap for reform of the presidency in the post-Trump era.”

“In fourteen chapters,” the book’s description continues, the authors “offer more than fifty concrete proposals concerning presidential conflicts of interest, foreign influence on elections, pardon power abuse, assaults on the press, law enforcement independence, Special Counsel procedures, FBI investigations of presidents and presidential campaigns, the role of the White House Counsel, war powers, control of nuclear weapons, executive branch vacancies, domestic emergency powers, how one administration should examine possible crimes by the president of a prior administration, and more. Each set of reform proposals is preceded by rich descriptions of relevant presidential history, and relevant background law and norms, that place the proposed reforms in context. All of the proposals are prefaced by a chapter that explains how Trump–and, in some cases, his predecessors–conducted the presidency in ways that justify these reforms. After Trump will thus be essential reading for the coming debate on how to reconstruct the laws and norms that constitute and govern the world’s most powerful office.”

A search for Bauer’s bio at Perkins Coie under “Robert Bauer” or “Bob Bauer” now yields no results.

As of fall 2021, Bauer returned to instructing at New York University School of Law as “a professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence.”

An “elected member” of the American Law Institute, Bauer is co-founder and currently co-chair of the Election Official Legal Defense Network (EOLDN) which “connects elections officials in need of advice or assistance with licensed, qualified pro bono attorneys at no cost. This service is available regardless of the election official’s political affiliation, or whether they work in a blue or red state or county.”

The Obama Birth Certificate

As longtime readers of this publication are aware, Bauer served as Barack Obama’s White House counsel between November 2009 and early summer 2011, departing approximately six weeks after an image was published on the White House website purported to represent Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate from Hawaii.

Almost immediately, a number of experts called out the image as a poorly-crafted forgery.

In a 2019 column in The Atlantic, Bauer accused Trump of overt “racism” because of his questioning, beginning in late 2010, of Obama’s bona fides to serve as president due to his missing birth certificate, which The New York Times dubbed “birtherism.”

Early in the 2012 presidential campaign for which Obama sought reelection, a group of constituents of then-Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joseph Arpaio requested an investigation into the White House birth certificate image given that numerous analysts had promptly deemed it a sloppily-fabricated forgery.

Arpaio assented and designated his “Cold Case Posse,” led by former detective and former private investigator Mike Zullo, to complete the assignment.

To his surprise, Arpaio later revealed, Zullo and his team of attorneys, former law enforcers and analysts could not clear the image as authentic. Rather, at an initial press conference on March 1, 2012, Zullo reported the group determined the image to be a “computer-generated forgery” created, he said, “with the intent to deceive.”

The probe continued through December 2016, when at a third and final presser Zullo disclosed that two forensic document analysts, working in different disciplines and without knowledge of the other, were commissioned to analyze the image. In formal reports, Zullo said, the analysts arrived at conclusions very similar to his own.

The Post & Email on several occasions spoke with Zullo about the press “gaggle” and conference cobbled together on the morning of April 27, 2011 wherein then-White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and Bauer asserted “that the two ‘certified copies’ of Obama’s ‘long-form’ birth certificate allegedly obtained from the Hawaii Department of Health (HDOH) by Obama’s personal attorney, Judith Corley, bore a ‘seal.'”

Corley was a Perkins Coie attorney at the time.

Zullo and the two forensic analysts insist there is no seal on the image. In a follow-up article dated April 29, 2024 reporting the National Archives’ retention of the “unauthenticated” document on its website, we reported:

During the gaggle, Pfeiffer told reporters the image bore a “seal,” implying it proved authenticity.

Bauer claimed the “original” birth certificate “is in a bound volume in the records at the state Department of Health in Hawaii.” 

Zullo has refuted that claim, along with the presence of any state seal on the PDF image the National Archives displays on its website, rendering it, as he put it, “unauthenticated.”

In a chapter devoted to the birth certificate investigation in his 2020 memoir, “Sheriff Joe Arpaio: An American Legend,” Arpaio wrote:

After all my hard work and dedication to enforcing illegal immigration laws, America could have possibly elected a naturalized citizen, born of a U.S. citizen, but constitutionally unqualified to serve as president, to two terms as commander-in-chief and, for too many, it’s just too much to bear. With all that is coming out now, in relation to the government’s intelligence coup d’état, the only hope that history gets this right in the near term is an unfettered President Donald J. Trump in a second term. If not, history may not tell the real story for 50 years—if ever.