The Biden pardon scandal is growing, with new internal emails showing that even high-ranking administration officials raised alarms about the president’s reliance on an autopen to sign pardons, including for his own family, and the White House’s chaotic disregard for Justice Department warnings.
Axios reporter Alex Thompson obtained emails that reveal just how reckless the final weeks of Biden’s presidency became. What is emerging is not just a picture of confusion, but one of an 82-year-old president delegating away one of the most solemn duties of his office.
“There was a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon, and then they largely didn’t run it by the Justice Department to vet them,” a person familiar with the process told Axios.
Biden granted more clemency than any president in U.S. history: a staggering 4,245 people, with 95% of those actions crammed into his final 3½ months in office. Many of them were approved using an autopen, a machine that reproduces the president’s signature without him lifting a pen.
This included pardons for five members of his own family. Emails show the decision to pardon his brother and sister, both accused of leveraging the Biden name for personal profit, was made in a meeting that included First Lady Jill Biden’s top aide, Anthony Bernal.
On the night of January 19, less than 14 hours before Biden left office, Chief of Staff Jeff Zients’ email account authorized the autopen for those pardons:
“I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all the following pardons. Thanks, JZ.”
The email was not even written by Zients himself. It was sent by his aide, Rosa Po, using his account.
The Department of Justice was repeatedly sidelined. Ethics attorney Bradley Weinsheimer blasted Biden’s claims that his clemency actions covered “nonviolent drug offenders.” His memo flatly contradicted the president’s spin:
The next day, senior Justice Department ethics attorney Bradley Weinsheimer penned a scathing memo stating that calling the clemency recipients nonviolent was “untrue, or at least misleading.”Weinsheimer continued: “Unfortunately and despite repeated requests and warnings, we were not afforded a reasonable opportunity to vet and provide input on those you were considering.”
Among Biden’s “nonviolent” picks was a man who pleaded guilty to murder charges after killing a woman and her 2-year-old daughter. DOJ had flagged him as “problematic,” but Biden commuted his sentence anyway.
Even inside the West Wing, some officials balked. Staff secretary Stef Feldman demanded proof that Biden himself approved autopen use, writing:
When did we get [Biden’s] approval of this?” she asked on Jan. 7, after being asked to use the autopen for an executive order.
The fallout is still growing. The House Oversight Committee will grill Jeff Zients on September 18 over the scandal.
If pardoning your own family with an autopen, while letting violent offenders walk free against DOJ objections, is not an abuse of power worthy of impeachment, what is? Biden’s final days in office may go down not just as chaotic but as one of the most brazen scandals in presidential history.
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