An internal White House memo shows that officials on Joe Biden’s staff argued that the president should be physically signing “pardon letters” rather than issuing mass pardons using the president’s autopenned signature.

The memo casts additional doubts on thousands of pardons issued in the final days of Biden’s presidency and calls into question whether the president himself was consulted before those pardons were announced.

Representative James Comer (R-KY), who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, shared a copy of the memo on X, noting that, “In his final days, Joe Biden wasn’t signing pardons, not even those for his own family.”

Internal emails obtained by the New York Post, indicate that the final days of Biden’s presidency were filled with debate over who should be included in the mass pardons and whether Biden himself had been properly consulted before the use of an autopen to mechanically apply the president’s signature.

Fox News reports that one person familiar with the clemency process, told Axios that, in the days following Hunter Biden’s pardon on Dec 1, 2024, “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.”

Three days before leaving office, Biden announced that he was “commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of non-violent drug offenses who are serving disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today under current law, policy and practice.”

Biden added, “With this action, I have now issued more individual pardons and commutations than any president in U.S. history.”

According to Axios, the following day, senior Justice Department attorney Bradley Weinsheimer sent a memo arguing that the portrayal of those who were pardoned as non-violent was “untrue, or at least misleading.”

“Unfortunately and despite repeated requests and warnings, we were not afforded a reasonable opportunity to vet and provide input on those you were considering,” Weinsheimer wrote.

These newly revealed internal memos and emails call into question the legitimacy of the pardons as well as whether Biden or his staff were actually in charge at the White House.