In a June letter requesting his testimony, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) wrote that Sams had been “a first line of defense to spin negative stories about the President and his mishaps” and possessed critical knowledge of “who made key decisions and exercised the powers of the executive branch … possibly without former President Biden’s consent.”

At the center of the inquiry are questions about the autopen, a mechanical device that replicates a president’s signature. While past presidents have used it for routine correspondence, Republicans allege Biden’s aides may have deployed it on weighty executive actions and mass pardons without his personal consent — a move they warn could amount to a constitutional breach.

The testimony comes on the heels of revelations reported earlier this week that Biden ignored warnings by a senior Justice Department official about the public characterization of his mass clemency grants during his final days in office. Internal DOJ emails, obtained by the conservative Oversight Project and reviewed by the Washington Examiner, showed former Associate Deputy Attorney Bradley Weinsheimer warned the White House that the vague language in Biden’s mass commutations risked freeing violent felons — contradicting public claims that only “nonviolent drug offenders” were implicated as part of the over 2,500 candidates covered in the clemency sweep.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have seized on the post-presidency revelations of Biden’s reliance on the autopen. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) in June demanded records showing Biden personally authorized each use of the autopen, warning that “we should subpoena those documents, and we should find out the truth of who was really running the White House.”

President Donald Trump has described Biden’s utilization of the autopen as possibly “one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50-100 years,” comparing it to Watergate and beyond. Still, experts say the act of using the autopen is legally sound, while Republicans have deepened their desires to uncover whether Biden always assented to his aides utilizing it, pointing to reports like a July New York Times article that revealed the former president signed off on a method of “criteria” for mass clemency rather than directly reviewing the convicted people.

Biden, in a phone interview with the New York Times, pushed back on those allegations, calling Trump and his allies “liars” and insisting, “I made every decision.” Though he defended the use of the autopen due to the volume of warrants, he confirmed he hand-signed only one: a December 2024 pardon for his son Hunter Biden.

BIDEN IGNORED DOJ WARNINGS OVER LEGALLY FLAWED AUTOPEN PARDONS

Sams is well known in Washington for his role defending Biden after special counsel Robert Hur’s report, which described the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” He also ran the January 2023 press call regarding the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s Delaware home, which prompted Hur’s investigation.

Sams’s interview is expected to last several hours. He is the latest in a string of high-level aides, including Anita Dunn and Ron Klain, who have appeared before committee investigators in recent weeks.