Former president Joe Biden, responding to the allegations that the presidential autopen was used to affix his signature on official documents making decisions that he was not aware of or consulted about, back in June: “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
The New York Post, this morning:
President Biden’s sweeping clemency grants during his final days in office caused concern inside the West Wing and Justice Department about how to ensure his wishes were accurately implemented — and it’s unclear whether Biden himself was consulted before thousands of pardons were announced, internal emails obtained exclusively by The Post show.
…Then-White House Staff Secretary Stef Feldman, a key gatekeeper of the presidential autopen, wrote to West Wing lawyers she needed evidence Biden had consented before she authorized a mechanical signature on one of the most sweeping acts of clemency in American history.
“I’m going to need email from [Deputy Assistant to the President] Rosa [Po] on original chain confirming P[resident] signs off on the specific documents when they are ready,” Feldman wrote to five other Biden aides at 9:16 p.m.
Six minutes later, deputy White House counsel Tyeesha Dixon, one of the email recipients, forwarded the message to Michael Posada, chief of staff to the White House counsel’s office.
“Michael, thoughts on how to handle this?” Dixon asked, adding in reference to the documents authorizing clemency: “He doesn’t review the warrants.”
The warrant is the official document declaring the pardon or clemency.
As the Post notes, Biden was so detached from the process of these commutations that in July he insisted to the New York Times that the autopen was used because there were a lot of them, when in fact only a handful of documents required the presidential signature. (Biden seemed to think that the commutation he granted to 2,490 individuals required each commutation to be signed on a separate document.)
It is now clear that Biden had little idea of what was going on with those commutations, and simply trusted his staff to affix his signature on any commutation that met his criteria, that he described to his staff verbally. It will be interesting to see if any federal court is willing to conclude that those commutations are no longer valid.