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Well, there are a bunch of executive orders signed by Biden that are invalid and it involves an auto pen. A lot of discussions to be had about this, but also the trans ban inside of the Pentagon. The Houthis trump so many things to dive into. Gabby Cuccia is with us once again. She is the Pentagon oan correspondent and she comes to us now from inside of the studio that she operates in, but not in fact from the Pentagon, but she covers the Pentagon every day. What's good? Do I need to call Secretary Hegseth? How come you're not set up yet inside the Pentagon? What's going on?
Gabrielle Cuccia
I am. This is actually the first time, Buck, you're the exclusive. This is the first time that we are physically okay.
Podcast Host
You are.
Gabrielle Cuccia
Yeah, yeah. We're in the Pentagon building with wi fi as of this week of which it usually takes at a minimum three months apparently to get any service when you come into the Pentagon. But there's reporters that don't have Internet access and haven't had it for like over a year just in certain parts of the press corps wing. So pretty wild. Usually I just run outside and report my news from the outdoors. But we're inside. This is insider. Look, we're almost done.
Buck Sexton
How is the food in the Pentagon? I've never been to the Pentagon. You know, I've, I've worked in Langley for years. Never. I went all White House, Congress, bunch of different intel, Intel Agency buildings, never went to the Pentagon.
Gabrielle Cuccia
Well, listen, Buck, haven't you, you know, this doesn't the CIA. The CIA always has the best food, the best law, cafeteria. That stuff still stands. But I will say the Pentagon, Pentagon slaps when it comes to their food because I worked at the White House, you know. So like I saw the cafeteria, I see the Capitol Hill cafeteria. So Pentagon cafeteria is pretty good. CIA one is definitely still number one. But yeah, they got a courtyard actually. Funny, funny fact about the courtyard. It used to. There's in the middle of the courtyard is a pot bellies now, but it used to be a hot dog stand. And back in like the 90s, I believe it was the 90s, 80s or 90s, Russia was trying to do surveillance on the Pentagon and they thought that this hot dog stand was, they didn't know it was a hot dog stand. They thought it was some sort of like secret part of the Pentagon that no one knew about. And so then Pentagon officials drew a bullseye on top of the hot dog stand and let Russia know it was in fact a hot dog stand. Anyway, there's that.
Buck Sexton
Yeah, Langley, we used to, I used to get like pressed, fresh pressed panini and with my cappuccino, you know, it was a very, I'm being serious, by the way. Like they actually had pretty good, pretty good food over there. I hope the Internet works considering that you're at the institution that has the biggest military budget on the planet. So hopefully the Internet can stay.
Gabrielle Cuccia
Yeah, they're moving. They're bumping up, which I'm sure you've talked about this already. It's traditionally around 900 billion spending and now they're bumping it up to 1 trillion, which I imagine that a lot of that has to do with the Golden Dome at a minimum. But they do have. DOD does have some questions that need to be answered considering that the F18s of the USS Truman, two of which over the last week have been lost.
Buck Sexton
What's the Golden Dome?
Gabrielle Cuccia
The Golden Dome, you know, the Golden Dome, it's similar of course to the Iron Dome in which we are anticipating that the DOD is going to roll. I believe it's by 2027, the end of 2027, they will have hopefully some sort of final beta testing for infrastructure to intercept any sort of missiles or any threats via satellite imagery to be able to knock down just very similar to the Iron Dome of Israel. And you know, with, with the Iron Dome. And I'm sure people know this, I know that you know this book, but we, we talk about the Iron Dome a lot, especially this past week, considering that the Houthis were able to breach the Iron Dome, Israel, saying that there was some sort of technical failure and they're doing an investigation. But the, the failure piece was we have our Thaad missiles and our, our Patriot batteries and that are being utilized. We just gave a second one recently, literally about a month ago to the date to Israel and that portion appeared to have some sort of malfunction to. They were able to detect that missile coming on through the Iron Dome. But weren't able to actually respond and intercept it, which is pretty wild considering the damage that was done.
Podcast Host
So.
Buck Sexton
So hopefully you, you are something of a, an auto pen expert and you can tell everybody why that is and you think that there's a very good chance that the auto pen was being used in the latter part of Biden's administration, let's say perhaps particularly his final year. Why? And what would that mean?
Gabrielle Cuccia
Yeah, absolutely, Buck. So yeah, I worked at the executive clerk's office. It's one of the oldest office of the executive branch and of which those people do not change per administration. So and before I even worked there, when I was working in the IT department, I serviced that office very regularly during the Obama administration. So I've seen the auto pen, I know how it works and then utilized it myself when I was an executive clerk. But it's not even the last year I think is where the media was hyper fixated on whether or not Biden had this cognitive decline. I mean there's people. I mean our former reporter here at OANN was doing a full special about Biden's decline mentally well before the media was even talking about that in the beginning of the administration. So I'm actually saying he utilized the auto penalty from the beginning of his administration all four years. When you look at those signatures, that auto pen signature gets updated and it's reflective of the most current signature over time, people's hands can get a little bit shakier as they get older or whatever it is they decide to like add a, I don't know, like a little star or an asterisk over some sort of letter in their name. Like signatures can change naturally over time. The auto pen will reflect any changes. The auto pen was never changed. And the signature of Joe Biden, the alleged signature. Right. The authentic one, never changed either. Majority of those executive orders within those four years never had any ounce of squiggle or a mess for that shows an authentic signature. And I'm sure being at the CIA, right, like you see human signature collection. So being able to discern signatures in and of itself is. It's not that it's, it's pretty easy, but someone probably with your background, you could look at that and go, okay, yeah, that appears to be machinery, especially when it's identical. So being understanding the auto pen and from my perspective from being in that office, those signatures are mostly autopen. And when you talk about who has the authority over that, the exact. I'm not blaming the executive Clerk's office at all again. They retained historically. They are a part of an email thread from the beginning of time for any ounce of document that requires presidential authority. Presidential signature though most commonly would be say your executive orders, your proclamations, your memos, disaster declarations, whatever it may be. You see those from start to finish? I saw those from start to finish. So from the drafts to general counsel being involved and putting in their two cents from National Security Council if they're necessary to be involved, or any other agencies as well, you see all of those additions from start to finish at the very end, the staff secretary. So that's who the executive clerks answer to directly. They are given in this email thread at the very last bless off the words ready for ap, ready for autopen, and that comes from the main staff secretary. When that happens, you print the document off nice White House bond paper and you bring it up to records management who actually mans the autopen, put the document under there, watch the signature, go give it to the West Wing and that's it. We make a press release and then that's when everybody knows, and especially in Biden's case, because compared to say President Trump in his first term and certainly in the second term, he's signing everything in person. The press releases are being done but press is knowing simultaneously. Not the case during Biden, those press releases were going out because there was hardly any coverage of live in person signature. Anyways. Point being GOP oversight, lots of Republicans hyper focused back in, you know, at the end of the term saying was Biden fully aware of the things that he was signing and saying that they're going to do an investigation and using, you know, taxpayer funded resources. I would just say every ounce of anything that President Biden at that time had ever signed was completely stored in email traffic from the White House Microsoft Outlook account. So it's all there. And if you wanted to even look and question anyone at any given time, you would look at the staff secretary, of which there were three. You had Neera Tanden, you had Stephanie Feldman and you had Jessica Hertz. You had three. And that's all you need to do is look at them, question and evaluate the email chain for every single thing that utilized the auto pen because it has to be recorded. The executive clerk's office would never ever put out a presidential signature on auto pen without the direct authority from the staff secretary. That's their main job.
Buck Sexton
That was the deepest dive on auto pen I have ever heard or experienced. So that is a very interesting background. Thank you for that. We're going to let's talk here in a second about basically a lot of Biden executive orders might be. Might be totally null and void, but we'll see if that can ever be proven. So Trump said that the Houthis are going to stop attacking ships. What can you tell us about what's going on with this?
Gabrielle Cuccia
Yeah, I think that came to a surprise from everybody, because especially with me covering the DOD. I mean, that was. We entered into day 51, starting on Monday, of daily air precision strikes against the Houthis in the Red sea, specifically per US DoD. Right. And we know all these rapid response accounts are very active online, and it has been a constant. We will not stop until they stop. Right. I found it really surprising watching President Trump in the Oval Office talk about this, because the main crux of the reasoning or directing the DoD to withhold and refrain from any further engagement with the Houthis in the Red Sea was that the quote being, we need to take their word for it. I will take their word for it. I'll take the word of the Houthis for it. But then you saw immediately after that you had personnel from the Houthis spokespeople or spokesmen from the Houthis directly saying that they're denying all accounts of any sort of agreement. But it's a dicey situation, right? Because even if there is a refrain in the Red Sea between the WHO and the UK is super involved with all the bombers that we bring into Diego Garcia, for your viewers, that's a joint base between the US and the UK we have all of these assets that are preset and staged to act beyond just these air precision strikes. So you have that one element that's happening in the Red Sea. Then the other element being, like we talked about earlier when we first started speaking to each other, was talking about the Iron Dome being infiltrated by a Houthi strike. Right? So it's dicey because we're saying the United States postures itself to be an ally of Israel and wanting the Houthis to stop any strikes or aggression towards Israel. But at the same rate, do we kind of pick and choose our wins or our losses here and be happy that maybe the Red Sea is actually absolved? I mean, Iran has a really terrible economy, and that is one of the reasons why China is a huge fund, huge fund, funder to the Houthis to include Satcom satellite imagery for the Houthis to actually execute their strikes, because Iran's capabilities are just like they're just not a match for China. So that's kind of the latest and was news to everyone in that moment at the Oval Office yesterday. I will say we do get which I appreciated since yesterday, the Pentagon gave us a full fledged Rolodex of foreign news networks. And so I was looking at Yemen, I was looking at Iran and parsing out what they were trying to say via Google Translate. They were confirming that Oman was the mediator between these conversations, alleged conversations between the United States and the Houthis. So I think this is more of a time will tell, but a stark, huge pivot from what we've been saying. What the DoD has been saying since, since mid March, is that the single.
Buck Sexton
Biggest thing right now that's on in terms of conflict, the DoD radar or DoD radar or is is India, Pakistan, something that everyone just thinks is going to be contained.
Gabrielle Cuccia
So the defense officials haven't been super aggressive on formally saying too much when it comes to India and Pakistan. And you know this like, traditionally, the DoD is never going to get ahead of anything that President Trump says. If anyone, it's been more of Trump and Marco Rubio being the loudest in the arena when it comes to just US Agencies talking about Pakistan and India. But there is this element of you have these two nuclear forces and neither, I'm almost looking at it in a sense of in this arena, a lot of these countries, the US to be included, stretched a little thin when it comes to denuclearization or any other further escalations. When you have what's going on between Ukraine and Russia, where you have what's going on in Gaza. And then of course, all these, these ongoing conversations, which again, that deadline for Iran to denuclearize. That deadline has far passed at this point. So there's a lot of unknowns and it doesn't bode well for any party. Right. Because you have India, you know, the United States aligning a lot more with India. Right. Considering our history, especially because Modi is such a ally with President Trump. But then on the other end, you have China, Beijing, both of which US And China have been mimicking the same thing, saying that they would call for a de escalation. But I mean, since 1947, there's been what, been three wars between the two. They've had constant escalation. I do find it interesting that it's happening now at a time where there's again, these other forces because again, this has always been an ongoing thing between India and Pakistan. I will say I can't imagine it going much further considering that the day being today, May 7, India announces their operation against Pakistan and allegedly loses Pakistan, saying they took down five aircraft. Other. Other outlets, British officials were saying about two, could be three. So you lose that many aircraft within 20 less than 24 hours of announcing your operation. Strikes at the same time is constantly saying and reiterating over and over again, hey, we're doing this in retaliation of that April 22 terror attack and nothing more, versus saying that we want to completely and indefinitely deter and eliminate Pakistan or terrorists within Pakistan. Right. Like that is significantly different than what we see say in Iran, in Gaza, or even between Ukraine and Russia.
Buck Sexton
We'll finish up here in a second with the change in the, well, I should say the court's latest action with regard to the transgender military issue. The first up here, our sponsor is Preborn. As Mother's Day approaches, I want to highlight that Preborn is an organization that cares very much about moms. Preborn's network of clinics offer love, support, and life to pregnant mothers who are scared and alone and being pressured to make the ultimate choice of either abortion or life for their baby. But what Preborn does is welcome them in and say, hey, you're a mom to be. Let's give you an ultrasound so you can meet that tiny baby growing in your womb. And so often this is just the game changing moment when mom realizes she's gonna be a mom and that's the right move. Preborn saves hundreds of thousands of lives in this way. An ultrasound is just $28. Five ultrasounds would be $140. It's all tax deductible. Every penny goes toward loving mothers and babies. Dial pound 250. Say the keyword baby. That's pound 250. Say baby or go to preborn.com buck. That's preborn.com b u c K. Sponsored by Preborn. Okay, so what is the latest on what's going on in the Pentagon? I know that the court has now ruled in favor of the Trump administration and Secretary Hagseth's moves, but just tell everybody what was the trans ban, is what people are calling it in the military. You know, has it gone into effect and what happens now?
Gabrielle Cuccia
Yeah, absolutely. So it did go into effect. And this was one of the first big memos that Hegseth had rolled out about two months ago at this point. And there was a lot, a lot of noise, people defiant in the sense that basically what this is, watering it down, is that if you are transgender, fully, medical, mental, all of those evaluations, transgender, you are not fit to serve, you're not fit to serve in combat locations. You're not deployable. That's the key word, right? Deployable. And it comes down to very simply, outside of any of this, no different than whether or not you're medically compliant. Is that you. If you're not medically compliant, case close, it's over. And then there's also that element of operationally, if you were to be on a deployment and you needed to be in contact with say your medical provider, have medications, have a psychiatrist of which most transgenders do, no matter what part of the transition they are in, that already is a security threat in and of itself. You can't just have an open line or have open access or a full on supply for however long you need when it comes to certain medications. All that type of stuff needs to be cleared for whatever deployment you're going on. So this is no different and very much in compliant on the medical side for the military, well before any of this was kind of rolled back, and it was all rolled back during the Biden administration in which they allowed for transgender. So it's kind of going back to, we're going to cut the fat. If you're not deployable, then we're not. You're not employable either. Because other than that, if you're not going on these trips or these assignments or tasking orders, then you're sitting at a desk instead or being given some sort of other job to fulfill in the interim of the rest of your unit going on missions. So this is kind of, this is good news. This is good news. It's completely compatible. I mean, this is no different than you want to run it back for a hot second. This is no different than say, during. I mean, actually it's very different. But this, the crux of it being like the CIA, for example, the military did it, all the agencies did it. You're undeployable if you didn't get the COVID vaccine. Now that's like was. Was buck wild, literally. But if that's how they determine deployability, then okay, like, it's wrong in my opinion. But like, okay, but this is like purely because they thought it was like a real, you know, not a planet. It was a real issue, sure. But if you crack at what I'm saying, maybe not. Maybe I'm making.
Buck Sexton
Oh, no, I get, I get you. I get, I get what you're putting down. Yeah.
Gabrielle Cuccia
Thank you.
Buck Sexton
We gotta leave it there for today, but people can go watch your latest reporting, Ms. Gabrielle Cuccia. @ One America News. She is their Pentagon correspondent. Gabrielle, thank you so.
Gabrielle Cuccia
Much. Thanks. Appreciate.
Podcast Host
You. Season two of Unrivaled Basketball is here and the talent is unreal. Paige Beckers, Nafiza Collier, Kelsey Plumb, Brianna Stewart and more are back to redefine the game. Unrivaled basketball season two, sponsored by Samsung Galaxy, tips off January 5th on TNT, TruTV and HBO. Max how do I do it all during the holidays? 4 words shipt same day delivery. With Shipt, I can order groceries from Albertsons, decor from Michael's, even gifts for my furry friend from Petsmart. Plus my personal shopper brings everything I need that same day. That makes it a breeze to decorate, get my shopping done and make time for all the holiday parties. Do it all this holiday season with Shipt. Download the app or visit shipt.com.
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Episode: Best Of Buck Brief – Could This Be the Biggest Biden Scandal Yet?
Date: December 16, 2025
Featuring: Buck Sexton (host), Gabrielle Cuccia (Pentagon Correspondent, One America News)
In this episode, Buck Sexton and Pentagon correspondent Gabrielle Cuccia dig deep into what could be a defining controversy of the Biden administration: the extensive use of an auto pen for presidential signatures. The pair analyze the potential legal and political fallout, contextualize the issue within past presidential practices, and broaden the conversation to current Pentagon affairs, including U.S. military policy on transgender service members, unrest involving the Houthis and Red Sea shipping, and ongoing global security threats.
[03:00-05:47]
[05:47-07:27]
[07:28-12:15]
Notable Quote:
"Majority of those executive orders within those four years never had any ounce of squiggle or a mess... The auto pen was never changed. And the signature of Joe Biden, the alleged signature, right—the authentic one—never changed either."
— Gabrielle Cuccia [09:50]
"That was the deepest dive on auto pen I have ever heard or experienced." [12:15]
[12:15-15:47]
Notable Quote:
"Iran’s capabilities are just not a match for China. So that’s kind of the latest and was news to everyone in that moment at the Oval Office yesterday."
— Gabrielle Cuccia [14:49]
[15:47-18:36]
Notable Quote:
"You lose that many aircraft within less than 24 hours of announcing your operation, strikes at the same time as constantly saying...we’re doing this in retaliation of that April 22 terror attack and nothing more."
— Gabrielle Cuccia [17:37]
[20:07-22:41]
Notable Quote:
"If you are transgender—fully, medical, mental, all those evaluations—you are not fit to serve in combat locations. You're not deployable. That's the key word."
— Gabrielle Cuccia [20:35]
| Timestamp | Segment Description | |----------------|------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:00–05:47 | Inside the Pentagon—wireless woes, food, and old anecdotes | | 05:47–07:27 | Pentagon budget hike and “Golden Dome” missile defense | | 07:28–12:15 | The Biden auto pen scandal: process, implications, proof | | 12:15–15:47 | Red Sea combat, Houthis, and disputed ceasefire claims | | 15:47–18:36 | India-Pakistan conflict and broader global security focus | | 20:07–22:41 | Return of the Pentagon "trans ban"—deployment criteria |
This robust episode combines policy analysis, insider reporting, and unvarnished debate. The central "scandal" revolves around the revelation that President Biden may have signed the majority of his official documents via auto pen—a practice with potentially profound legal consequences. The episode’s latter half broadens to dissect pressing defense issues, from missile defense failures and global flashpoints to the implications of newly reinstated Pentagon policies. Gabrielle Cuccia’s unique experience as a Pentagon correspondent and former White House official yields rare expertise, making this discussion essential listening for those seeking to understand the contours of executive authority and contemporary American defense politics.