NY Times Just Made the Autopen Scandal Worse for Biden
Oh, NYT. I know you want to save Biden but sometimes less is more because now we have more questions!
The New York Times attempted to perform damage control regarding former President Joe Biden and his pardons because Congress and the DOJ have been investigating the issue.
Instead, the publication made the situation worse because now I believe Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, and White House counsel Ed Siskel controlled the autopen.
“Biden did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons…Rather than ask Biden to keep signing revised versions, his staff waited and then ran the final version thru the autopen, which they saw as…routine”https://t.co/TwhbvujB6c pic.twitter.com/4OHRSl93or
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) July 13, 2025
Yes, that actually happened. Is anyone shocked? As Elizabeth wrote last month, a former top aide admitted to Congress that she had no idea who gave her the final authorization to use the autopen.
Let’s dive into it! I haven’t consumed enough caffeine yet, so I hope I catch everything.
Biden told the NYT that he “made every decision” and used the autopen because “we’re talking about a whole lot of people.”
Well, um, at the end of his term, Biden only granted pardons, commutations, clemency, and whatnot to only 25 people.
That’s not a lot. Granted, as someone with RA, signing three papers would cramp my wrist.
But still. 25 people and they weren’t given out at the same time:
Mr. Biden said in Thursday’s interview that he had his staff use an autopen for the warrants because he had granted clemency to so many people; the autopen was used, in all, on 25 pardon and commutation warrants from last December to January. Some of the individual warrants included large batches of names because they all fell into the same broad policy category, like reducing the sentences of nonviolent drug offenders who met standards Mr. Biden established.
Mr. Trump and his congressional allies are focused in particular on trying to delegitimize Mr. Biden’s final batch of clemency actions.
That set extended pre-emptive pardons to many people Mr. Trump perceives as enemies, including Gen. Mark A. Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci and members and staff of the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot. Mr. Trump has claimed on social media that the Jan. 6 committee pardons are invalid, asserting, without offering evidence, that Mr. Biden “did not know anything about them!”
In the 10-minute interview, which The Times requested as part of its reporting on the investigations, Mr. Biden said he shielded those people, along with members of his family, so they would not have to run up large legal bills from politically motivated investigations by the Trump Justice Department.
“Everybody knows how vindictive he is, so we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now,” Mr. Biden said, adding, “I consciously made all those decisions.”
Siskel stated, “The president makes the final decision on the final pardon and/or commutation slate.”
It sounded like the White House staff secretary wanted to follow the rules with the autopen and yet…yeah:
They also show that use of the autopen was managed by Mr. Biden’s White House staff secretary, Ms. Feldman. She wanted to receive written accounts confirming Mr. Biden’s oral instructions in the meetings before having it used to produce the warrants recording the clemency actions, the emails show.
The aides referred to those written accounts of meetings at which Mr. Biden delivered oral decisions as “blurbs.” The accounts were drafted by aides to the senior advisers who had participated in the key meetings — like Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Jeffrey D. Zients, and Mr. Siskel.
The assistants who drafted the blurbs were not themselves in the room with Mr. Biden, according to the lists of meeting participants. The emails imply that Mr. Siskel and Mr. Zients relayed what Mr. Biden had said to the assistants, who then documented it.
The assistants circulated the drafts to Mr. Siskel, Mr. Zients and other meeting participants before sending the final versions to Ms. Feldman, again copying the meeting participants.
Feldman received “blurbs” from people not in the room with Biden. These people relied on accounts from Zients and Siskel.
Despite this, Feldman went ahead with the autopen.
This is the part where the lede makes its grand entrance:
Mr. 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.
Even after Mr. Biden made that decision, one former aide said, the Bureau of Prisons kept providing additional information about specific inmates, resulting in small changes to the list. 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, the aide said.
But don’t worry! Biden reassured the NYT that “he discussed each of the high-profile individuals with aides.”
It seems to me, though, that the president has to approve every single pardon and commutation.
I gathered from the NYT piece that Zients provided the final authorization:
At the Jan. 19 meeting, which took place in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House residence, Mr. Biden kept his aides until nearly 10 p.m. to talk through such decisions, according to people familiar with the matter.
The emails show that an aide to Mr. Siskel sent a draft summary of Mr. Biden’s decisions at that meeting to an assistant to Mr. Zients, copying Mr. Siskel, at 10:03 p.m. The assistant forwarded it to Mr. Reed and Mr. Zients, asking for their approval, and then sent a final version to Ms. Feldman — copying many meeting participants and aides — at 10:28 p.m.
Three minutes later, Mr. Zients hit “reply all” and wrote, “I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons.”
Why did the assistant send the final summary to Zients and ask for his approval?
I thought the president had the final say on pardons and commutations.
So, thanks, NYT! Now we have more questions about the autopen!
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
It’s not a stretch that it’s the office of the president that issues pardons, so it doesn’t matter. If everything’s run by aides, pardons are no different.
If you’re going to intervene, it has to be a lot sooner than this.
It will be an interesting question for the courts. A parallel, to my mind, would be the President’s role as Commander In Chief. Can the President delegate his power to use military force against another nation to an aide?
The difference, legally, may be that the delegated use of force authority is spelled out in detail in a 1986 law called the Goldwater–Nichols Act. It specifies EXACTLY to whom the president may delegate combatant action authority to (it’s SecDef then to the Combatant Commanders and no one else. This is why the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is no longer in the combatant chain of command today). As far as I know, there is no statutory guidance Congress has provided on the issuance of pardons/clemency. That’s obviously something that should change. Of course, SCOTUS would likely have to decide if Congress as the authority itself to give guidance to POTUS on the process he takes to exercise an explicit constitutional power. But, if they have no problems with Goldwater-Nichols (and they don’t) they shouldn’t with similar statutory guidance on pardons.
I believe that even with the conservatives leaning of the current SCOTUS they will be unwilling in the end to open this particular can of worms. We need to give the 25th amendment implementing law more teeth to punish cabinet members and the VP for not invoking it on a senile president.
25A allows Congress to establish a body by law for evaluation of the President’s competence, but the VP still must be the one to request invocation of 25A. Still, an official medical examination board, appointed by Congress, with equal partisan representation, could be one way to get around the problems of the Biden residency. The problems can’t be eliminated without revision of 25A, though.
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the
executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Aides are there to do the foot work and resolve details. The executive is the one to approve the final product. If Biden didn’t sign the final authorization, then the legality of that authorization is, at minimum, in doubt. This is simple policy to determine traceability of an action. Pardons and commutations issued by “the office of the President” can be challenged if the president himself didn’t pass on it.
.
It seems from this story that they’re claiming that’s all they did. He said “I’m commuting all these people’s sentences”, and they got a list together of all “these people” and auto-signed a press release. Which is all a physical “pardon” is.
Pay close attention to this– as the facts worsen, this is what the left will cling to, Milhouse test balloon.
Azathoth, as usual, doesn’t give a crap about the truth. He doesn’t even believe in the concept of objective truth. Like a true leftist (cf 1984), “truth” is whatever serves the Party at any given moment.
It’s also no stretch that how the POTUS goes about disseminating the pardon power is a matter of internal executive branch procedure and not subject to legal review. The excerpts make it clear that Biden was involved with the category pardons, discussing the criteria. How those decisions translate into written pardons for whom is likely to be seen as beyond the purview of the court system.
That rests on a bunch of assumptions. Did he ‘delegate’? To whom? How much? For what time period? Was the power unlimited? Was the search for those for whom it would apply exhaustive? Contrast the categorical pardons of Biden with those of Carter and we see Carter’s for draft dodgers are clear, specifically describing the 4 corners of applicability and transparent (if still stupid and immoral) v Biden’s very opaque grant. Also assuming that he was competent to delegate which is another layer in this we don’t have to get to in order to be skeptical.
Does Biden even know, remember, or care about the answers to those questions?
Well, apparently he told the NY Times that this is what he did, and he remembers doing it. Whether it’s true, and whether he really remembers it or was just repeating what he was told to say, are different questions.
Sadly because it opens such a can of worms (and the proof of it is almost impossible) nothing will come of this. Biden will just be told to say he approved it.
Correct. For this to go anywhere, Congress and/or DoJ would need a credible, high-ranking Biden official to spill the beans, under oath and publicly. That’s almost certainly not going to happen.
Wrong, the Constitution does not empower the President’s aides. And assistants
They’re claiming that he personally and consciously granted the clemency, not them. That’s all the constitution requires. They can take care of the details; that’s what they’re for.
The power of clemency is vested in the president, not in his office. Only the president can grant clemency. But the office can take care of things like notifying the recipient and/or the public. And that could include having a certificate printed and auto-signed.
If these decisions were made in the oval office wouldn’t there be a recording of the conversations?
No, there wouldn’t be. Since Nixon, presidents have been wary of recording their conversations. Reagan often did record them, but he was the exception.
Mary, I’m sorry to hear you have RA. Have you looked into low dose naltrexone?
“Everybody knows how vindictive he is, so we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now,” Mr. Biden said
The J6 prisoners would like a word. Not to mention Donald Trump himself.
“Vindictive?”
Never, ever, ever forget Joe Biden’s creepy smile after Trump’s “conviction.”
I stand firm on my original opinion of this mess.
It was clear from the start Biden had NO IDEA who he pardoned, or why, and didn’t sign off on them.
But that simply doesn’t matter.
Because if they try to prosecute somebody who had an autopen pardon, the case will be dismissed, and even if they appeal to the Supreme Court, they will refuse to hear the case.
Why? Because if they revoke ANYTHING he did with the autopen, then that means they’re going to have to rule on EVERY SINGLE ACTION HE TOOK with the autopen for his entire 4 years.
The Supreme Court is simply not going to open that can of worms.
I hope the Supreme Court opens the “preemptive pardon” can of worms.
Preemptive pardons are not a can of worms. Presidents since Washington have routinely issued preemptive pardons, and no one ever questioned them. It’s never been the case that a president must wait for someone to be convicted, or even charged, before exercising clemency.
when they write the fjb history
what will they leave out and/or assign to #45 as the real culprit?
like they do with vietnam when they blame nixon..reagan and the one moment the stock market crashed…bush and the wmd…..trump and the worlds ills
Its always easier AFTER THE FACT to be honest……fjb is gone but like woody wilson and fdr and obama
their stains on americas freedoms still negatively impact our lives today
wait until this goes to the scotus for validity (or not) of orders executed by “the pen”
can already see kentanjis response:
if it wasnt for someone elses pen I would have never published a decision
The important point here is that Biden’s instructions were “relayed” by his inner circle. In other words, they set things up so that no one could possibly verify (or refute) Biden’s involvement in the decisions.
Of course Biden’s own testimony on the subject is worthless. He’s senile, meaning not mentally competent to know for sure what he’s testifying to.
This reminds me VERY much of the way Edith Wilson kept Woodrow completely isolated from everyone but his doctor after a stroke nearly killed him. In her memoir, Edith claimed that Woodrow was always in charge and she was just helping him by relaying his instructions.
Edith lied.
But now we’re supposed to trust the people who treated Biden very similarly to the way Edith treated Woodrow?
It doesn’t pass the smell test.
If Biden testifies that he approved the pardons, there’s not a winning legal case to be made.
The politics of accepting a pardon are interesting. No one is required to accept a pardon.
There was never a strong chance of invalidating the pardons (or any other action signed by the autopen). Simple deference to the Executive should force the courts to make the bar to accomplish that very high. It’s still an important discussion to have.
BUT, you raise an interesting point about acceptance of a pardon. My (possibly flawed) understanding is that when you accept a pardon, you admit guilt for the charged crime. So why not call Fauci and Hunter and others up in front of Congress to testify under oath to what they were guilty of?
They can’t claim the 5th because there’s no jeopardy. They’ve been pardoned. Likewise, if they claim they did nothing wrong then they are saying they accepted those pardons under false pretenses. Then the pardons become invalid and they can be prosecuted.
Sounds like a fun angle to try!
Your understanding is flawed. There is no such rule. On the contrary, presidents have occasionally pardoned people precisely because they believed them to be innocent; in such a case a requirement to acknowledge guilt before accepting a pardon would turn the pardon into a cruel farce.
There was a Supreme Court decision that noted that there is a common perception to that effect. If someone accepts a pardon many people will conclude that he is acknowledging guilt. But they will be wrong.
Would the Congress accept a veto with an autopen signature? Then why would the Judiciary? If I was a judge and someone pulled the pardon card in my court I would demand the original with a wet signature. Then let the upper courts fight it out.
A veto is simply the act of returning a bill to Congress unsigned. It may be accompanied by a veto message, but doesn’t have to be.
A bill automatically becomes law without the President’s signature after 10 working days.
Congress has no choice but to accept such a veto, and neither does the judiciary. If you were a judge you would have no right to do that. Neither a veto nor a pardon requires any signature whatsoever. Therefore an autopen signature is just as good.
But in fact even a bill, which does require a signature, can be signed by autopen. This is not even slightly controversial, so long as the president is in the room when it’s signed, and it’s done at his instruction. Controversy only arose when 0bama once had a bill auto-signed without his presence; there was no question that he consciously and specifically ordered it to be signed, but he wasn’t physically there. In the end no one challenged it, but legal experts did raise the question, because it seemed to violate the common law rule.
So you’re saying that the PRESIDENT has to be PRESENT when the AUTOPEN is used for it to be valid?? If so, then you should agree that NONE of those are VALID since Joe was NOT PRESENT when the AUTOPEN acted as PRESIDENT!
The common law rule is that a signature by proxy is only valid when performed in the signer’s presence. So for bills, which the constitution requires the president to sign, the practice was always that they could not be signed by autopen unless the president was there.
0bama broke that rule once, ordering a bill to be signed by autopen without his physical presence; legal experts raised the issue, but no one challenged the law in court.
But pardons and executive orders don’t need to be signed at all, so signatures outside the president’s presence should not be a problem, so long as he did in fact order the pardon or the order to be issued. The question here is whether Biden did that, and how we can know.
The law very clearly assumes a president is mentally competent if the Constitution has not been invoked by the cabinet to get him out of office.
Joe Biden barely remembers his location he is not going to be able to testify if he signed resulting in a presumption he did intend on those pardons.
His competence isn’t the primary issue it is whether his staff’s use of the ‘auto pen’ for some or all of these pardons was made with his direct knowledge and direct consent. Given that the longstanding evidence for Presidential knowledge/consent of issuing a pardon was his handwritten signature on the pardon plus the rather conspicuous fact Biden actually signed his Family members pardons…..it does raise some questions about whether the staffers went wild with the auto pen.
LOL. Believing any of this requires believing DementiaJoe was still awake at 10:00 PM.. LMAO!!!
Why not? He may have gone to bed at 4, had a 5-hour nap, and been woken at 9.
“Why were so many documents signed with autopen?”
“We couldn’t control it. It just started signing stuff!”
That is not correct. There were 25 separate warrants in the course of a month; some of them included hundreds of people.
That’s fair enough. She is told what the president wants signed, and she signs it. She doesn’t have to hear it directly from the president.
This is completely legitimate. The president never needs to even be informed of the exact list of names; and in fact there’s doesn’t even have to be such a list.
Suppose one day Trump were to tell his Chief of Staff that he is commuting the sentence of anyone who is in federal prison and was born on the same day he was. She could simply have a proclamation drawn up saying exactly that, have it auto-signed (or not signed at all), and send it to the Bureau of Prisons ordering them to release everyone who fits the category. Or she could ask the BOP to provide a list of every person in that category, and have individual certificates printed up and auto-signed, and sent to each person. Either way there would be no need to bother the President. The clemency took effect the moment he told her about it.
Yes, but not every name on it. And that’s what they’re claiming he did. (Whether it’s true is another question, but we’re discussing their story, not what actually happened, which we still don’t know.)
Again, their story is that he had approved the criteria, and left it to them to implement his orders. In this particular case it seems that their story is that he did approve each individual name, but left it to them to have the list properly typed up and the clemency letters printed and signed. That’s a mere clerical task, since clemency needn’t be in writing, let alone signed.
Presumptive pardons are fascinating because this seems to give the President the authority to enable criminal acts by guaranteeing immunity from prosecution, unless successfully removed via impeachment.
So? That was always the case. A president could always promise someone a pardon; but there is no way to enforce such a promise.
Here’s ANOTHER REASON we need a LAW – the LAME DUCK LAW! It should state that a PRESIDENT who loses an election is NOT ELIGIBLE to make any decisions on FUNDING or PARDONS or COMMUTATIONS or ANYTHING! The NEW PRESIDENT should have the LEGAL Responsibility for those actions even though the “Inauguration Date” is months away!
Presidents should not run for re-election on HIDDEN AGENDAS! They should be required to make their DECISIONS PRIOR to Election DAY – as in ONE DAY!! That way, People can be assured what they vote for!
Congress has no authority to make such a law. The president is the president until his term expires, and there is only one president during that time. The person who will be president has no status whatsoever during that period, and no right to interfere.
Funny how the NYT didn’t ask a single Republican (Senator or Congressman) or anyone of prominence from the “other side” of the aisle what they thought. If this had been a Republican president, they would have gotten quotes from every well-known Democrat to tell the world just how egregious and illegal this was. Instead, they keep the cocoon wrapped snugly around their boy.