A report from The New York Times indicates that former President Joe Biden’s staffers used the autopen to sign off on changes to pardons without notifying the president.
The article states that Biden “did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people, he and aides confirmed. Rather, after extensive discussion of different possible criteria, he signed off on the standards he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction in sentence,” The Times’ Charlie Savage and Tyler Pager wrote.
According to the report, however, “small changes to the list” kept occurring after Biden “signed off,” and so, “rather than ask Mr. Biden to keep signing revised versions, his staff waited and then ran the final version through the autopen, which they saw as a routine procedure.”
While Biden himself reportedly insisted he made “every decision,” he did add, according to The Times, that “he had his staff use an autopen replicating his signature on the clemency warrants because ‘we’re talking about a whole lot of people.’”
And while The Times claims that internal emails “show … that the Biden White House had a process to establish that Mr. Biden had orally made decisions in meetings before the staff secretary, Stefanie Feldman, who managed use of the autopen, would have clemency records put through the signing device,” there’s no tangible proof provided that Biden gave his oral approval.
Just weeks before The Times released the report, Biden’s former head of Domestic Policy Council Neera Tanden said in a closed-door meeting with the House Oversight Committee that she authorized the use of autopen signatures on documents even though she didn’t know who gave the final approval, Fox News reported. Tanden reportedly said she “rarely interacted with Biden,” as Jacqueline Annis-Levings wrote for The Federalist.
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President Donald Trump announced in June an investigation into whether Biden was actually running the country or whether his staff was using an autopen to carry out the duties of the executive branch.
A memo instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi to open the investigation stated that “it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority.”
“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history. The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts,” the memo continued.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
