This was always a carefully timed lie meant to buy midterm votes.

Everyone has considered the legality since March 2020, when Trump first gave Covid student loan relief by waiving interest on borrowers.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos “is proud to work with the President in taking decisive action to help students and parents during this national emergency,”

The US Department of Education heavily considered the extends of its legal authority at this time, as Democrats were criticizing that it wasn't enough and that loans should be "forgiven." The US Department of Education's Office of the General Counsel, in consultation with the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, concluded she would lack statutory authority to do so.

Not long after, the Republican Senate's Covid relief bill with large bipartisan support, turned sour and was blocked by Democratic Senators after Pelosi's signalling. That same bill was then renamed, temporarily stuffed with contentious extras, and submitted in Democratic House. For a week the extras remained, causing it to not pass. This gained a week's worth of news cycles reporting that, "Republicans are blocking Covid relief." After this common dirty political stunt with the bill hurt citizens with misdirected blame long enough, House Democrats stripped the contentious extras from the bill, back to effectively the same Senate bill, and the HEROS Act easily sailed through passing both chambers of Congress and was quickly signed by Trump.

This HEROS Act gave the Congressional authority to waive student loan payments, even this, the Department of Education determined it didn't have authority to do, without Congress. This payment waiver still continues today due to repeated extension in successive Congressional bills.

Upon the changing administration, the outgoing Department of Education's Office of the General Counsel summarized the status of its legal review, making clear that the previous understanding of legal standing had not changed; that student loan "forgiveness" was not legal without Congressional legislation; it could not be done by the Department of Education's authority, even accompanied by a Presidential executive order.

Everyone knew this was the Constitutional and legal fact, but Democrats their supporting rabid lying media news outlets,{1} began to gaslight the public that "forgiveness" was just something Trump and Republicans opposed, not because it was Unconstitutional, but because they were simply cruel, greedy, and mean.

• Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) according to Politico{1} in early 2021

  “You don’t need Congress,” he said in December [implies Dec 2020]. “All you need is the flick of a pen.”

• Biden's US Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, penned the memo concluding

  "[W]e conclude that the Secretary can exercise the waiver or modification authority granted by the HEROES Act of 2003 to reduce or cancel the principal balances of student loans,"

• Biden's US Department of Education General Counsel, Lisa Brown, also penned a memo concluding, then bashing the previous Administration's legal opinions

  Several provisions of the HEROES Act indicate that Congress intended the Act to confer broad authority under the circumstances,

  “Having reviewed the memorandum in consultation with the Office of Legal Counsel, we have determined that although it accurately describes the core features of the HEROES Act, its ultimate conclusions are unsupported and incorrect,” the DOE lawyer argues. “As such, it should be rescinded.”

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)'s campaign released a legal memo written by Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, purporting to

  [chart] a [legal] path for the Education Department to wipe out large amounts of debt unilaterally.

footnotes:

{1} This referenced Politico article, aside gaslighting that legal interpretation was an intentional effort to "hamstring" the incoming administration from providing student loan "forgiveness," it falsely recounts Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's farewell letter to Congress urged lawmakers to reject the incoming administration’s push to cancel student loan debt, something it clearly doesn't mention or reference in any way.