Biden Autopen Investigator: Playtime Is Over; It’s Time To Prosecute
'Whoever controlled the autopen controlled the presidency,' Mike Howell, of the government watchdog Oversight Project, said.'Whoever controlled the autopen controlled the presidency,' Mike Howell, of the government watchdog Oversight Project, said.DOJ pardon attorney doubts validity of Biden autopen pardons as nullification campaign picks up steam
The campaign to throw out the Biden-era pardons for Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the Biden clan, former members of the House Jan. 6 select committee, and other controversial figures appears to be gaining momentum — and the Office of the Pardon Attorney made clear this week that it's onboard.
The House Oversight Committee alleged in its damning 100-page report on Tuesday that senior Biden staffers not only worked desperately to conceal the former president's rapid mental deterioration but usurped his authority with the help of the presidential autopen — a machine used to affix Biden's signature to a host of controversial executive actions and pardons.
'In theory, a court invalidation could result in restoration of penalties.'
"As President Biden was losing command of himself throughout his time in office, his executive actions — especially pardons, of which there are many — cannot all be deemed his own," said the report. "The authority to grant pardons is not provided to the president’s inner circle. Nor can it be delegated to particular staff when a president’s competency is in question."
Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) concluded that unauthorized executive actions signed by autopen were "null and void," then asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to review the validity of all executive actions taken during Biden's time in office.
Bondi confirmed on Tuesday that a review of the autopen use for pardons during the Biden era is underway.
Ed Martin, the U.S. pardon attorney at the DOJ, suggested in a letter on Monday to Comer that his investigation into the matter has turned up "disturbing findings" such that his office "cannot support the validity and ongoing legal effect of pardons and commutations issued during the Biden administration without further examination."
In the letter obtained by CNN, Martin suggested that Biden's admission to the New York Times that he "did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people" by itself "seems to raise serious questions of whether those commutations are valid."
RELATED: Biden freed killers with a pen he didn’t even hold
Martin indicated that doubt over the validity of the commutations is further compounded by the suggestion in former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer's communications with the Biden White House that the autopenned commutations issued on Jan. 17 in the former president's name were legally flawed.
The pardon attorney raised other "defects" concerning the pardon process, particularly in the final weeks of the administration.
"My office cannot support the validity of AutoPen pardons for individuals such as Anthony Fauci, Adam Schiff, Mark Milley, and many more without further examination and fact-finding," wrote Martin. "In my tenure here, I have not seen any evidence supporting the theory that President Biden was personally aware and authorized these AutoPen'd pardons."
Martin, who alluded to a court ultimately weighing in on the validity of the pardons, told Comer, "If these pardons or commutations are challenged in any way, I recognize serious difficulties in defending them."
The Oversight Committee similarly foreshadowed a court voiding the pardons in its report, stating that "the Constitution is clear: 'The President shall ... have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States.'"
The committee further quoted from a recent essay by constitutional scholar Philip Hamburger, a professor at Columbia Law School, which concluded, "The history confirms that the Constitution’s location of the pardon power is significant. The president must make the decisions, and the courts can hold pardons void if the decisions are made by others."
While the nullification campaign's success in the courts could spell disaster for Fauci, Milley, and others, some scholars have cast doubt on the likelihood of that outcome.
When asked whether the pardonees' convictions and legal vulnerabilities would be fully restored should their pardons be ruled invalid, Jeremy Paul, a professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law, told Blaze News, "In theory, a court invalidation could result in restoration of penalties. I see this as extremely unlikely."
"If the DOJ attempted to impose punishment upon the affected individuals, the individuals would raise the pardons as a defense in federal court," continued Paul. "Lower courts would issue rulings. The case could end up in the Supreme Court but that Court would not be required to hear the case."
Paul expressed doubt about whether the pardons could be invalidated in the first place, stating, "Unless evidence emerges that DOJ officials granted pardons in express opposition to President Biden's wishes, which seems highly unlikely, I cannot see any basis on which pardons could be deemed invalid."
Bernadette Meyler, a Stanford Law School professor, suggested to CNN that one way to go about trying to void a pardon would be for Attorney General Bondi to "sue for a declaratory judgment that the pardons were invalid because of some form of impropriety in the signing of them, or in the giving of the pardon."
Blaze News has reached out to the Office of the Pardon Attorney for comment.
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National Archives has bad news for some of the crooks who received clemency in Biden's name
President Donald Trump declared on March 17 that "the 'Pardons' that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen."
"In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!" the president continued. "The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime."
Liberal fact-checkers rushed to suggest the president was wrong about the Biden pardons — however, a great deal of evidence has come out vindicating Trump's understanding that the pardons were likely unlawful.
'I made the decisions during my presidency.'
Two weeks after the Oversight Project obtained internal emails from the Justice Department indicating that there was a high-level understanding in the Biden administration that many of the commutations autopenned in the former president's name were legally flawed, Just the News received internal Biden White House memos that could similarly spell trouble for recipients.
Mike Howell — president of the Oversight Project, which first exposed the Biden White House's prolific use of the autopen earlier this year — told Blaze News, "We've been right all along, and it's nice to be right again. It's past time to start actually charging these people."
The memos, gathered as part of a Trump White House Counsel probe into Biden's use of autopen signatures for official business, shed additional light on the Biden White House's shifting approach to pardons and the former president's involvement in the process.
A February 2021 draft memo from then-White House staff secretary Jessica Hertz — a final version of which was reportedly not referenced in the National Archives — detailed guidelines for Biden's autopen use "based on precedent from the Obama-Biden administration."
The memo, which was sent early in the Democratic administration to Biden insiders, including then-chief of staff Ron Klain, noted that congressional bills, veto messages, and pardon letters were among the documents the president should personally approve and hand-sign.
It is clear from the liberal use of autopen signatures on pardons and other consequential presidential actions by the Biden White House that this guidance did not stick.
While Biden told news outlets in June, "I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations," a draft memo circulated by Biden's White House Counsel in February 2024 suggested otherwise.
The 2024 draft memo detailed the "general pattern" followed by members of the White House Counsel's Office clemency team when securing approval for clemency, revealing that Biden "previously asked the White House Counsel to discuss the [clemency] candidates with him, although in the last round the vice president’s approval was sufficient to obtain his approval."
RELATED: Biden freed killers with a pen he didn’t even hold
The Trump White House reportedly concluded that this particular memo indicates that Biden was "outsourcing" clemency decisions to Kamala Harris in 2024.
The Trump WHCO's probe also found very little evidence to suggest Biden actually attended four critical clemency meetings in December 2024 and January 2025 and "turned up no record of the president’s briefing books addressing pardons, commutations, or clemency at that time," Just the News reported.
The National Archives apparently has no contemporaneous staff notes confirming Biden was present at the Dec. 5, Dec. 11, Jan. 11, and Jan. 19 meetings where he was later said to have supposedly given "verbal approval" for commutations for federal death row inmates, members of the Biden family, and other unsavory characters.
The Trump White House also found a troubling indication in its review that Biden may have not been sufficiently involved in the controversial commutation of sentences for 37 federal inmates sitting on death row.
In a Dec. 10, 2024, draft memo, then-White House counsel Edward Siskel recommended that Biden grant clemency for the felons; however, the National Archives reportedly proved unable to find a final version of the memo bearing proof of Biden's approval for the commutations that were ultimately granted in his name.
Just the News indicated that the office of Joe and Jill Biden did not respond to a request for comment.
"In June 2022, the Biden White House began deploying the autopen to sign clemency warrants and executive orders in July of 2022. Autopen use skyrocketed from there," former Idaho Solicitor General Theodore Wold, a board member of the Oversight Project, told the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in June. "We found that of the 51 clemency warrants issued during the Biden presidency, over half — 32 in total — were signed with an autopen."
Wold later emphasized that the "president actually has to make the decision — that cannot be delegated to a staffer or an adviser," but there was no indication "that anyone other than staff were making these decisions."
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Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.
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DOJ exposes 'black and white evidence' that Biden admin knew autopenned pardons were legally flawed
The Oversight Project obtained damning internal emails this week from the Justice Department revealing a high-level understanding in the Biden administration that the autopenned commutations issued on Jan. 17 in the former president's name were legally flawed.
In addition to showcasing former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer's legal concerns, the emails provided by U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin's office reveal that the Biden administration apparently misled the nation about the violent criminal nature of the individuals who received commutations.
'You should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading.'
Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, "This represents the first written black and white evidence of fundamental disagreement in the Biden camp as it relates to the pardon strategy writ large."
"Obviously, this is particularized to the warrants for the commutations of people they never should have let out of jail — but it's the senior-most career lawyer in the DOJ, like [Merrick] Garland's top guy, basically saying, 'WTF are you guys doing? This is illegal,'" said Howell.
Howell suggested further that the potentially unlawful nature of the commutations is cause to keep imprisoned those whose sentences were commuted and who are scheduled to be released.
For those felons who received clemency and are no longer behind bars, the Oversight Project president said, "They should rearrest them."
A Jan. 17, 2025, statement attributed to Biden characterizes the recipients of the commutations as felons "convicted of non-violent drug offenses."
The emails obtained by the Oversight Project reportedly show that Weinsheimer, a 34-year department veteran, took issue with this apparent lie, noting that "in the communications about the commutations, the White House has described those who received commutations as people of non-violent drug offenses. I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading."
RELATED: Biden tried defending autopen use to the New York Times. He made it a whole lot worse.
"I do not think it is close to accurate to describe all the clemency recipients as those convicted of non-violent drug offenses," apparently added the former DOJ official.
'I have no idea if the President was aware of these backgrounds when making clemency decisions.'
The 2,490 federal inmates who received the commutations are a motley crew of thugs, including murderers and violent drug dealers.
Among them:
- Terrence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne, whose drug-trafficking offenses led to the death of a police officer;
- Russell McIntosh, a thug who gunned down a woman who threatened to expose his drug enterprise along with her 2-year-old child;
- Adrian Peeler, sentenced for conspiracy to commit murder involving the slaying of an 8-year-old witness and his mother; and
- Plaze Anderson, a former high-ranking member of the Gangster Disciples who was personally involved in two murders, an attempted murder and kidnapping, and obstruction of justice.
Weinsheimer added that based on limited review, the DOJ identified 19 inmates under consideration for clemency who were "highly problematic," as that list included "violent offenders, including those who committed acts of violence during the offense of conviction, or who otherwise have a history of violence such that it is misleading to suggest they are non-violent drug offenders," the email showed.
Sixteen of those 19 problematic felons received grants of clemency in Biden's name, and their commutations were characterized as "progress towards justice" by the American Civil Liberties Union.
"I have no idea if the President was aware of these backgrounds when making clemency decisions," Weinsheimer wrote. "The Department was largely excluded from the process, which we otherwise opposed."
The emails revealed that not only were the commutations opposed internally and not as advertised — they were likely unlawful.
Blaze News has reached out to Weinsheimer and the ACLU for comment.
RELATED: Don’t let the Biden autopen scandal become just another lame hearing
Three clemency warrants were apparently issued on Jan. 17. The second of the three warrants awarded clemency to criminals for "offenses described to the Department of Justice."
Weinsheimer and others at the DOJ seemingly had trouble making heads or tails of the warrant and its legality, as no offenses were actually described.
The emails show a fight to get a list of the criminals' offenses — specifically those for which they were receiving commutations — amid mounting questions from courts, congressional staff, and the criminals' families.
'Because no offenses have been described to the Department from the President, the commutations do not take effect.'
In a Jan. 18 email to his DOJ colleagues at the Pardon Attorney's Office as well as to the White House Counsel's Office, Weinsheimer noted, "I think the language 'offenses described to the Department of Justice' in the warrant is highly problematic and in order to resolve its meaning appropriately, and consistent with the President’s intent, we will need a statement or direction from the President as to how to interpret the language."
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Weinsheimer suggested that the "clearest and least problematic way" of curing the apparent legal error was for Biden to explain his meaning and to provide a "list as to each inmate listing the offenses that are covered by the commutation."
The DOJ official identified three other ways to deal with the apparent legal error.
The DOJ could interpret the warrant to apply to "all federal offenses for which the inmate is under sentence" — an interpretation the Bureau of Prisons was reportedly likely to use. Weinsheimer warned, however, that such an interpretation would likely result in the commutations of sentences for violent felons, which Biden may not have wanted, and would render the qualifying language "superfluous."
RELATED: Jill Biden's 'shadowy' chief of staff clams up during autopen probe
Alternatively, the DOJ could interpret "offenses described to the Department" on the basis of "the U.S. Sentencing Commission Spreadsheets" — the nature and contents of which are presently unclear. According to the emails, Weinsheimer again expressed concern, suggesting that "it is a guess as to what is meant by the warrant language, and [that interpretation] goes beyond the four corners of the warrant, something we do not normally do."
The final way Weinsheimer identified was not to act on the commutations: "Because no offenses have been described to the Department from the President, the commutations do not take effect."
'It's time for legal action based on autopen.'
Weinsheimer noted further that "describing offenses to the Department is a condition precedent to the commutations being effective, and without description, they do not take effect. I have no idea what interpretation the incoming [Trump] Administration will give to the warrant, but they may find this interpretation attractive, as it gives effect to the language but does not go beyond the four corners of the warrant."
The Oversight Project noted that while "pardoning via category is already an illegal delegation of a nondelegable power," that Weinsheimer email "illustrates that the government officials charged with executing the president's delegated orders on January 17, 2025, Warrant 2 had no idea what the president actually ordered."
Howell told Blaze News that the revelations in the emails provide the administration and lawmakers with an "angle to attack."
Howell said that President Donald Trump, who has already declared all of the autopen pardons null and void, can now say, "We're not honoring these commutations. You know who agrees with us? Biden's DOJ."
"Again, for the first time, we have written evidence of the disagreement," said Howell. "So there's no reason to sit around and wait. It's time for legal action based on autopen."
Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.
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Biden tried defending autopen use to the New York Times. He made it a whole lot worse.
The House Oversight Committee's investigation into former President Joe Biden's cognitive decline while in office, its cover-up, and its alleged exploitation behind the scenes appears to have struck a nerve, drawing Biden out and with him a baseline narrative that might trip up his handlers when they each testify in the weeks to come.
Mike Howell, the president of the Oversight Project — the government watchdog that revealed in early March that Biden's signature on numerous pardons, commutations, executive orders, and other documents of national consequence was machine-generated — told Blaze News, "We were right. Time for some real accountability."
'I made every single one of those.'
On Wednesday, former President Joe Biden's White House doctor, Kevin O'Connor, refused to answer the committee's questions, citing the Fifth Amendment and doctor-patient confidentiality.
The doctor's damning silence prompted Republicans on the committee to conclude that O'Connor "is trying to avoid criminal liability" and that the investigation was indeed dealing with a serious cover-up.
The next day, Biden spoke to the New York Times by phone in an apparent effort to get in front of the autopen scandal even though it left the station months ago. The roughly 10-minute interview didn't do him any favors.
Biden sent mixed signals to the Times about his supposed involvement in the issuance of a record number of pardons and commutations in the final days of his presidency.
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"I made every single one of those," Biden said regarding the clemency decisions late in his term. "And — including the categories, when we set this up to begin with. And so — but I understand why Trump would think that, because obviously, I guess, he doesn't focus much. Anyway, so — yes, I made every decision."
Despite attributing the clemency decisions to himself, Biden also indicated that his fingerprints might not be on any of them.
In addition to telling the Times that he orally communicated his decisions to aides — a possible tell that there might be a lack of papered evidence showing that he directly approved the last-minute pardons — Biden noted both that the autopen was used liberally because there were "a whole lot of people" and that he did not personally approve every individual categorical clemency.
"Well, first of all, there's categories. So, you know, they aren't reading names off for the commutations for those who had been home confinements for, during the pandemic," said Biden. "So the only things that really we read off names for were, for example, you know, was I, what was I going to do about, for example, Mark Milley?"
"I told them I wanted to make sure he had a pardon because I knew exactly what Trump would do — without any merit, I might add," continued Biden. "And you know, you know, members of the Jan. 6 committee — it's just, there were no — I was deeply involved. I laid out a strategy how I want to go about these, dealing with pardons and commutations. I was — and I pulled the team in to say this is how I want to get it done generically and then specifically. And so, you know, that's just — this is how it worked."
Biden White House emails turned over to investigators by the National Archives and reviewed by the Times cast further doubt on the former president's claim of deep involvement in the pardon process.
'The truth will come out about who was, in fact, running the country.'
The emails indicate that Biden White House staff secretary Stefanie Feldman managed the use of the autopen.
Feldman, the national policy director for Biden's 2020 campaign, took over for Neera Tanden, who told Congress last month that she wielded the power of the autopen until May 2023 but suggested that she was authorized to do so.
According to the emails, Feldman sought written accounts confirming Biden's oral clemency instructions in "key meetings" with staffers. The trouble is that these accounts appear to have been secondhand and in some cases written up several days after the meetings.
Aides to senior Biden advisers who were present for the meetings apparently drafted the accounts confirming Biden's oral instructions. The two advisers named were Biden chief of staff Jeffrey Zients and then-White House counsel Ed Siskel.
Senior Democrats told Politico last year that Siskel organized talks among Biden aides in the former president's absence on "whether to issue pre-emptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House."
Lists of meeting participants indicate that the aides who drafted the accounts of Biden's supposed clemency instructions were not themselves present when the instructions were given.
Rather, the emails reportedly imply that the aides simply wrote up whatever their bosses relayed to them, then circulated the drafts to Siskel, Zients, and other meeting participants before sending along the final versions to the master of the autopen.
RELATED: Oversight Project over target: Dems seethe as facade of autopen presidency comes crashing down
As for the high-profile clemency decisions that came just before Biden left office, the final decision appears to have come from Zients.
Emails suggest that on Jan. 18 and Jan. 19, Biden had two meetings, the first with Zients, Siskel, and Bruce Reed — Axios indicated that Reed was sometimes referred to in the Biden White House as one of "the pooh-bahs" — and the second with Siskel, Reed, Anthony Bernal, Steve Ricchetti, and Annie Tomasini, all of whom are on congressional investigators' radar.
Bernal served as senior adviser to former first lady Jill Biden and was characterized as one of the most influential people in the White House and a key member of Biden's so-called politburo in Jake Tapper's and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson's new book, "Original Sin."
Ricchetti, former counselor to Biden, was among the names Department of Justice pardon attorney Ed Martin mentioned when announcing his investigation into the questionable "autopen" pardons issued in the final days of the Biden White House.
Tomasini was Biden's deputy chief of staff, who congressional investigators suspect may have been "involved in running interference on behalf of the former President and perhaps performing duties exclusively reserved for the President of the United States."
Biden supposedly kept his staffers until 10 p.m. at the Jan. 19 meeting where the pre-emptive pardons for Biden's family members were discussed. Three minutes after the meeting, Siskel sent a draft summary of the former president's alleged decision to Zients' assistant, who then forwarded it to Reed and Zients for approval. A final version went to Feldman minutes later, chased by a message from Zients apparently stating, "I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons."
When asked about evidence that Biden did not authorize the clemency actions, Trump White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the Times Sunday that Biden "should not be trusted" and that "the truth will come out about who was, in fact, running the country."
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