Trump DOJ Reviewing Biden Giving Family Preemptive Pardons
Joe pardoned his siblings and Hunter.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice started investigating former President Joe Biden’s pardons, specifically the preemptive pardons he gave his family and clemency for 37 prisoners on federal death row.
- Hunter Biden
- Brother James and his wife Sara
- Brother Francis
- Sister Valerie and her husband John Owens
The preemptive pardon for Hunter infuriated numerous people, especially since it covers charges he faced or might have faced from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024.
Unfortunately, Reuters reported the DOJ investigation first. I say unfortunately because, of course, the author tried to water down the pardons and the possibility that Biden didn’t even sign them by attacking Trump.
Anyway, the wire organization reviewed an email sent by Ed Martin, the DOJ’s pardon attorney, saying the “investigation involves whether Biden ‘was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.'”
Peter Doocy of Fox News brought some of those pardons to the daily press briefing, noting that only Hunter’s pardon seems to have an authentic signature:
DOOCY: In fact, if you look at the last name, it almost looks like the president was having a hard time spelling his last name there. Is this White House of the opinion that the only pardon that would count is one that the president signed himself?
PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: Very interesting. Very interesting props. If you want to bring them to my office later so I can take a closer look. The president is making a good point when he discusses the usage of the autopen, who was running the country for the past four years. Perhaps those documents were signed with the autopen, something that I believe the Department of Justice is looking into.
As you saw, Ed Martin made an announcement at the Department of Justice this morning to launch an investigation because the American people deserve.Answers. Is there any concern that this president, who won the election on a promise to fix the economy and close the border, that focusing and scrutinizing these Biden pardons is looking into the past instead of looking forward?
I think in comparison, to the amount of time this president has spent on securing the border, on fixing our economy, I just read out for you an entire list of accomplishment economic accomplishments. Look at the border numbers. Look at the time and effort he’s divulged into solving the global conflicts abroad. It pales in comparison, but it still nevertheless is a very important issue, and it was a huge issue that sent the president back to this White House.
The Americans saw with their own eyes a mentally incompetent president, and they want answers for that. And the president believes they should have them.
.@pdoocy points out that Biden's AUTHENTIC signature only appears on ONE PARDON PAPERWORK, the others look to have had autopen signatures!🤔🫣
"Is this White House of the opinion that the only pardon that would count, is one that the president signed himself, for Hunter Biden?" pic.twitter.com/lTKudlXFwu
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 3, 2025
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And even if he actually signed it, did he know what he was signing?
It can be summed up this way:
“Biden didn’t know much!”
He never did.
I have a very bright relative that hates Trump down to his toenails. He has always said that the biggest thing he holds against Trump is that Trump got us Biden.
And Biden got us Trump,
For that matter Obama got us Trump.
And he knows less today than he knew yesterday.
Hunter is his son and he publicly announced that one. The others, not so much.
And only in America, folks — a headline from today’s Daily Wire:
Hunter Biden’s Favorite Prostitute Charged With Manslaughter
If your life depended upon choosing who signed these pardons, Mr. Biden or *anyone* else on earth, who would you choose?
Joe Biden makes the Bernie in Weekend at Bernie’s look like the life of the party. He’s the absolute nadir of morality and intellect. Joe couldn’t get a job today as a parking lot speedbump.
Bernie Lomax’s corpse in that classic comedy film showed more vigor, vitality and dexterity than dotard-crime boss, Biden, on his best day in the White House.
We really need accountability for Biden’s sham presidency.
see only the dems get to by pass the courts and congress
b/c they dont care about the rules of law
while the maga is holding out BASED ON HOPE that they will win in the courts
that game is over
so unless something happens and QUICKLY and the scotus rules that the potus is within constitutional means …we are once again going to be left holding the bad
while the dems run rampant and slash and burn b/c they already have criminality on their side
same way that slave owners ruled when the courts upheld laws that were CLEARLY AGAINST THE VERY NATURE OF THE IDEA OF THIS COUNTRY
well not its UNFAIRLY BEING HELD AGAINST US
thats why we are now ruled by the black matriarchy
allllll the troubles that they assign ,,rightly or wrongly to wht people,,,are being held up as constitutional by the courts
no court in their right minds would uphold affirmative action …but here we are decades later with a form of servitude legally on the books
and no comfortable persons are going to jeopardize their lifestyles to take it on
correction: “left holding the baG
well NOW its UNFAIRLY
I’ll say it before, I’ll say it again.
The simple fact is that The Dread Coward Roberts WILL NOT allow any challenge to any action Biden took, whether it was the autopen or the pardons.
Because the second he allows ANY challenge on the basis of the autopen or Biden’s obvious mental incapacity, it means he will have to rule on EVERY ONE of his actions.
And the precious ‘legitimacy’ of his precious court could not do that.
So he won’t allow any challenge to be heard.
There’s no such thing as a “pre-emptive pardon”. The fact that it needs these linguistic acrobatics shows that it’s not a “pardon”, at all.
The pardon power in the Constitution is not the ability of the Presiodent to immunize any person against all possible charges. It’s the power to specifically PARDON a person for a criminal conviction. That’s it. Nothing more – I don’t care what crap has been allowed in the past.
A pardon may only be granted for a conviction – name the conviction, issue the pardon. The idea that the pardon power allows the President to declare someone totally free of any and all legal consideration is ridiculous and insane.
The language is abused beyond repair in this sort of insanity. A pardon is not an immunization.
As usual, you are full of shit. Every single thing you wrote was wrong, just as it usually is. Preemptive pardons are certainly a thing, and they are not “linguistic acrobatics” at all, but simply plain English.
The pardon power in the Constitution IS PRECISELY the President’s power to wipe away any offense someone may have committed, whether or not they have ever been charged with it, let alone convicted. That is what it has always been, since long before the constitution was written, or the USA even existed. It’s the way George Washington exercised it, without protest, which proves beyond all possible doubt that that is what it meant.
“I don’t care what crap has been allowed in the past.” In other words you don’t give a crap about the truth. At least you admit it.
Your claim that “a pardon may only be granted for a conviction” is ridiculous and insane, and utterly without any basis in history or law. You pulled it out of your rear end. No one who knows anything about the subject agrees with you.
You are a moron. You are claiming that the President has the power to declare any law invalid – “I hereby pardon everyone for violating Law X!”, but that is obviously retarded and silly.
You make the same idiotic arguments that Barky made when he decided that he would pick and choose what laws to enforce (and who to enforce them on) by claiming that it was “prosecutorial discretion” but that was a joke that only disingenuous morons like you would accept. Prosecutorial discretion never gave the prosecutor the right to pick and choose which laws should be enforced and the Presidential pardon power never gave the President the right to pick and choose which people will be exempt from law or which laws will be declared invalid during his term.
People like you are the reason that all systems of law eventually crumble under themselves. You demand that all sense be extracted from legality and you work with words whose meanings are changed at a moment’s notice to suit your immediate needs.
The President can’t invalidate a law; but he can certainly shield everyone from the consequences of breaking it while he’s in office. He can refuse to prosecute breaches while he’s in office, and he can pardon all offenders on his way out so the next president can’t prosecute them. The law remains in effect all the same.
That is the plain meaning of the constitution, and it is the undisputed law, and it doesn’t matter whether you like it. You are not entitled to change the universe because it doesn’t suit you. Water will certainly wet us, as Fire will certainly burn; your wish that it were otherwise doesn’t matter.
Thank you for detailing your idiocy.
I rest my case.
You mean your idiocy. Because what I wrote is the undisputed reality. What you wrote is a drugged-up dream.
This is the question.
Presumptive Pardons seem a bit beyond the pale. How can pardons be granted for something not even charged? Even the Papal plenary Indulgences that triggered the Protestant movement dared not go – that- far.
I appreciate your post ‘ThePrimordialOrderedPair’.
How so?
Why on earth would they not? Why would a pardon ever depend on whether the offense had already been charged? Who could possibly imagine such a system? On the contrary, if clemency can extend even to charged offenses then how much more so to offenses not even charged! Who could imagine telling the president that in order to pardon someone he must first go through the motions of charging him?!
What on earth are you talking about? There is no possible way you could say that if you had any idea what an indulgence is. Any indulgence granted to a living person must by definition be for sins not yet charged before the Heavenly Court! Indeed not only indulgences, which don’t wipe sins out but merely reduce the penance due for them, are prospective, but so is forgiveness, which, like a presidential pardon, wipes sin out as if it had never occurred! And nothing has changed in church doctrine regarding either one; both forgiveness and indulgence are still very much part of Catholic doctrine. Including plenary indulgence, such as that granted on a person’s first communion.
Except Ford pardoned Nixon. Precedent.
So what? It was an illegal act – as it was not a “pardon”.
It was a pardon, and was completely and obviously legal. No one even bothered to dispute it. Nor was it anywhere near the first prospective pardon.
Precedent. Carter pardoned all Vietnam draft dodgers.
Illegal. Carter was not actually pardoning anyone but declaring an actual law invalid. But he took an oath to faithfully execute the laws. It would be Congress’ responsibility to nix a law.
Just because it was allowed doesn’t mean anything. It was illegal and it was NOT a “pardon”. It was a rewrite of statutes on a whim.
Wrong. Carter did not in any way suggest that the law against evading conscription was invalid; it remains undisputedly valid to this day, and should conscription ever return no new law will have to be made against it, because the old law is still in effect.
All Carter ever did was pardon those who had violated it in the course of the Vietnam War. And no one disputed his power to do so, because centuries of precedent said it was valid.
Your insane fantasies don’t change facts. George Washington issued blanket pardons for uncharged offenses. That is the best possible proof that such pardons are valid, and that you are wrong.
Ah … the infallibility of George Washington argument …
Just because something is not challenged does not make it correct. And even those things that are challenged and decided INCORRECTLY can still be corrected at a later date, upon more educated and interested inspection.
There is no Constitutional “right” to an abortion … though the SCOTUS made that laughable argument over 50 years ago and it stood for over half a century. So what? It was wildly incorrect and anyone with a brain and half a smidgeon of integrity understood that.
But here you are … claiming that the President is given the power to erase laws during his term at his whim and to immunize persons from any legal consequence for anything – even things totally unknown t the President (not that he, or you, would care) while he rules in office.
LOL. You’re a nut.
The actions of the Washington administration and the first Congress are the best proof of what the constitution meant to them, and thus what it means today. That is the most fundamental principle of originalism. If Washington did something and Congress didn’t object, then it is impossible that the constitution was understood to forbid it. And their understanding is what matters.
Can they look into Fauci next?
I firmly believe Biden didn’t run anything during his 4 years in office however we are going to have to prove that. Short of someone claiming they used the autopen without Biden’s knowledge or Biden himself saying he signed or didn’t sign and given his current state of mind nothing he says can be trusted, I’m not sure how any of it will be reversed.
Biden will probably be dead before he can be questioned on any of his pardons. Convenient.
Why would H. Biden need a pardon for something that 50 Intelligence officials informed us was a Russian misinformation operation?
Biden’s statement at the time (regardless of who actually wrote it) explains exactly that. He needed a pardon because without one the incoming administration was likely to make something up and bring false and frivolous charges against him. Like it or not, that is a perfectly reasonable explanation. The exact same explanation as Trump would have used had he done the sensible thing and pardoned himself and all J6 protesters before he left office in 2021.
No. It’s not.
Someone might bring “false and frivolous” charges of some kind so you issue a blanket pardon for anything ACTUALLY criminal someone might have done?
This is when you reveal yourself. When you rip off the mask and kick it out of the atmosphere.
Democrat.
. That’s right. How else could you shield them from malicious prosecution? Confident that they have in fact committed no offense, you pardon any offense they may have committed, so that they can no longer be prosecuted for allegedly having done so. It’s the only way to do it. And had Trump done it for the J6 protesters you would not have objected, because you are deeply and fundamentally dishonest.
These were not pardons; they were grants of blanket immunity.
That is what a pardon is.
No it is not a Get Out of Jail Free card, to be used for any offense that comes down the road.
NO ONE HAS EVER SUGGESTED that a pardon can cover future offenses. So if that’s all you’re saying then you’re making a really stupid strawman argument.
The pardon for Hunter Biden had a date range attached to it. It specifically did not cover anything that “comes down the road”.
It is 2025.
We find out, in 3 months, that Hunter offed someone on 2023.
And he’s got that blanket pardon.
THAT’S what’s meant by something ‘coming down the road.
You leftists who try to insist that people think it refers to Hunter committing MORE crimes are doing so in service to your masters and the narrative they wish to promote.
In Burdick v. United States: The court also compared immunity, granted by Congress, and a pardon, explaining that the differences are “substantial.” Unlike immunity, the court reasoned, a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it.”
A blanket “pardon” (i.e. for any crime that may have been committed over a 10 year period, known or unknown), is, in fact, immunity from prosecution.
First of all, that is dicta, and of no legal force at all.
Second, To claim that issuing a pardon carries an imputation of guilt is an outright falsehood, because everyone knows that pardons are often issued precisely because the president believes the person is innocent.
Third, the court absolutely did not say that accepting a pardon is a confession of guilt. It said that it is often perceived that way. Yes, that is true, many people do have such a false and ignorant perception, and that is a reason why a person might choose to refuse a pardon. But the perception remains false and ignorant.
Every pardon for an offense not yet prosecuted is a grant of immunity for that offense, and that is exactly how it has been used throughout its history.
Broad pardons have been generally considered legal (e.g. Carter pardoning draft dodgers), some legal scholars argue that they may not be constitutional if the President is not aware of the specific offenses or individuals being pardoned (i.e. a pardon grants immunity to specific offenses that have been identified).
Of course, the academics were vocal about such questions when everyone thought Trump would “pardon” everyone on the way out (there would have been legal challenges), but strangely silent after what Biden has done.
If we had an opposition party, we would call on those “pardoned” to testify without being able to invoke 5th amendment rights.
You may be correct, but I don’t think it is settled, as no one has ever abused the pardon power to this extent.
Broad pardons have been generally considered legal (e.g. Carter pardoning draft dodgers)
This was not a broad pardon.
It pardoned a single offense, that of draft dodging.
It pardoned a lot of people –but of that single, specific crime.
These type of pardons HAVE been taken as legal and constitutional– because they are.
The Biden pardons are broad –they cover any possible offense in a time period.
They aren’t pardons at all. They are a blanket immunity from any crime found to have been committed within that time period.
Finally, accepting a pardon IS an admission of guilt. You cannot be pardoned for something you didn’t do.
Because you did nothing to be pardoned of.
People forget that there are other means than pardoning. to free the wrongly charged or convicted. Charges and sentences can be vacated.
Having issues vacated means that they were brought wrongly. That the prosecution is ‘at fault’
One uses ‘pardons’ when the people in question have obviously done what they’re being charged with –as if, say, they videotaped some of their crimes. You make it ‘blanket’ when you know that there are others out there that you won’t be in position to cover up.
Azathoth is a demon from Hell, and has never told the truth about anything in his entire existence.
And a “pardon of innocence” is absolutely a thing. DOJ’s Standards for Considering Pardon Petitions explicitly acknowledge the possibility of “a pardon on grounds of innocence or miscarriage of justice”.
Story, back in 1833, wrote:Would it not be at once unjust and unreasonable to exclude all means of mitigating punishment, when subsequent inquiries should demonstrate, that the accusation was wholly unfounded, or the crime greatly diminished in point of atrocity and aggravation, from what the evidence at the trial seemed to establish? A power to pardon seems, indeed, indispensable under the most correct administration of the law by human tribunals; since, otherwise, men would sometimes fall a prey to the vindictiveness of accusers, the inaccuracy of testimony, and the fallibility of jurors and courts. There you have it, almost from the horse’s mouth: One of the purposes of the pardon power, from its very inception, is to allow the executive to correct miscarriages of justice and mitigate the punishment of actually innocent people.
Who signed the pardons is not an issue at all. Pardons don’t need to be signed. The issue is who ordered them to be issued. If Biden personally approved the pardons then they are valid and it makes absolutely no difference how they came to be signed. Likewise if he did not then they are invalid, and once again the signature makes no difference.
Go prove he didn’t approve them. Even if he has no memory now of having done so, that would prove nothing.
Ditto for bills he signed. Those do need signing, but autopen is acceptable so long as he personally ordered it, so the question is only whether he did so. The fact that he later had no memory of doing so means nothing, because he could easily have consciously ordered for them to be signed by autopen, and then forgotten about it.
Bills do need to be signed by the President. Not by a designee, whether live or machine, whether authorized or not.
Wrong. Signing by proxy is completely lawful and regular, provided the person in whose name it is being signed has authorized it and is in the room when it is done. There is a lot of doubt about the validity of proxy signatures outside the signatory’s physical presence, but none at all about their validity when done in his presence and at his behest.
Bills do not need to be signed at all, since they automatically become law in 10 days (Sundays excepted) without the President’s signature, unless they are vetoed by returning the bill to Congress.
I have been unable to find images of actual bills presented to the Presdient for sigining (I don’t know why they are unavailable) but I would think that every government order of any sort needs to be signed by someone. The President might not sign a bill but it’s already signed by the House and the Senate (I would assume the Speaker and the VP or President Pro-tem).
Someone always has to claim power or take responsibility and it must be recorded.
Read the frickin’ constitution for a change. There is no requirement for anyone but the president to sign a bill, and he can avoid that requirement, as Mew Cat says, by simply sitting on it for ten weekdays, provided that Congress is still in session. He is then deemed to have signed it even if he hasn’t. If Congress adjourns within the ten days, then the bill automatically dies unless the president signs it.
But the law allows all signatures, whether by the president or anyone else, to be executed by proxy, including by autopen, provided that it is signed in the signatory’s presence and with his authority.
Oh … you have the cite for the autopen in the Constitution? Please educate me. I seem to have missed that part.
Signatures were part of life (as they still are) and are assumed in many instances. Even to the point of making people draw an “X” if they were illiterate. The signature of the President is highlighted because he has 3 options in dealing with the bill, one of which is signing it. And “as if he had signed it” is not “deemed to have signed it”, you blithering idiot, it only means that the act becomes law, all the same. English isn’t really your thing.
More idiocy and backtracking. You claimed that “every government order of any sort needs to be signed by someone”, and that bills must be signed by someone in Congress before they’re transmitted to the president. The constitution refutes you.
That autopen signatures are valid is an undisputed principle of the law. It applies in all cases where a signature is required. There is no case in which a proxy signature is not just as good as a signature in person. Therefore that applies equally to the constitution, and if you think otherwise the onus is on you to prove it.
A couple of points, Milhouse:
“…everyone knows that pardons are often issued precisely because the president believes the person is innocent…”
That amused me – the lawyerly inclusion of the word “often” actually made me snort. Everyone in the coffee shop looked at me and my resultant idiot grin.
The second thing is I wonder how much mileage the Republicans can get out of the Hur interview tapes. True, Hur is not a doctor, but there’s objective evidence that Biden was mentally incapacitated during those interviews, and there’s no reason to assume that his abilities would improved later. Certainly his debate performance offers more evidence.
I suspect that Biden’s “private” medical records and medications will also come under review, and-that- could be quite a rabbit hole leading to known side-effect examination ( “Do not operate the machinery of government while taking this medication”
I think that an argument could certainly be made that by the time the pardons were signed Biden was not legally capable of making a a binding agreement…
It’s not lawyerly, it’s a well-known fact. Sometimes presidents pardon people who are undoubtedly guilty, because they think the penalty was too harsh, or because they think the person has changed and it’s in the public’s best interest for the offense to be wiped away; but sometimes they pardon because they believe the trial verdict to have been wrong.
The Hur tapes will make for good political use, but I don’t know how much legal use. They reflect at most the president’s state of mind at the time of the interviews, not at the time he signed any bill or approved any pardon. And they might not even reflect that. Hur’s public statement at the time was that Biden had successfully presented himself as senile, and would presumably do so again to any jury, but not that he actually was so. The implication was rather that he was pretending, like Vincent Gigante.
Is it reasonable to assume the legal battle would regard his legal incompetence at the time, even though the 25th amendment was not invoked, (mainly because there is no mandated reporter), and did he in fact authorize the pardons, regardless who used the machines?
Yes, of course, those would be the issues. If a pardon was issued without his authority then it’s not from him and is worthless. Likewise if he did order someone to issue a pardon, but one could somehow prove that he was incompetent at that moment, then presumably it would be as if he had not authorized it at all. Proving it, though, seems almost impossible.
So why not just go ahead and prosecute? Let the Bidenistas argue for immunity and then get one of their pet jurists to throw it out. Appeal it all the way up to the SC so that everyone gets the opportunity to go on record. Public opinion does not matter that much to the lawyers but it does to the ambitious politicians who will have to explain how such a thing could happen here.
Way too far away from the midterms. You want the democrats to go into the elections with this embarrassment hanging over their heads. Act too soon and the republicans run the risk of a defeat on the issue before people vote.
pardons vs george soros backed no bail no jail
dropped charges etc etc
unfettered attacks on non blmplo students on campuses
ccr: I see the bad moon a rising