OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
10:41 AM – Thursday, August 21, 2025
A senior Justice Department official in the Biden administration previously warned that thousands of last-minute pardons issued with a mechanical signature (autopen) could be legally flawed or, at the very least, be seen as “questionable.”
According to the Pew Research Center, former President Joe Biden granted 4,245 acts of clemency during his term — more than any previous U.S. president. This total includes 80 pardons, along with thousands of commutations, remissions, and respites.
In an interview with The New York Times, Biden also acknowledged that he did not personally review the names of those he pardoned; instead, his staff presented him with broad “categories” of cases for approval.
“Well, first of all, there’s categories. So, you know, they aren’t reading names off for the commutations for those who had been [on] home confinement for, during the pandemic,” Biden said. “So, the only things that really, we read off names for were, for example, you know, was I, what was I going to do about, for example, Mark Milley? Mark’s a good guy. We know how vindictive Trump is, and I’ve no doubt they would have gone after Mark for no good reason,” Biden said, pausing as he searched for the right words.
In the same interview, Biden also defended his administration’s use of the autopen to sign official documents.
“The autopen is, you know, is legal. As you know, other presidents used it, including Trump. But the point is that, you know, we’re talking about a whole lot of people,” the former Democrat president added.
However, the Department of Justice recently released an old email, dated January 18th, to the Oversight Project — an investigative organization dedicated to “keeping a watchful eye on the future of America”‘ In the email, Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer criticized a specific warrant, signed using the Biden administration’s autopen, which granted pardons to hundreds of violent criminals during the president’s final days in office.
The concern centered on the fact that the descriptions of the pardoned offenses were, according to Weinsheimer, “too vague,” which he warned could potentially invalidate the commutations. He also argued in the email that the DOJ was blocked from vetting the clemency candidates, citing “voluminous objections” from victims’ families regarding some pardons.
Some examples of violent criminals granted clemency by the Biden administration are Russell McIntosh, who fatally shot a woman and her 2-year-old child after she threatened to expose his drug-dealing business. Others in a category deemed “highly problematic'” by the Biden DOJ included several violent gang leaders and criminals convicted of murder, kidnapping, or rape. Nonetheless, such offenders were either given shortened prison sentences or now freely walk the streets — thanks to the Democrat president.
Biden did not offer any clarification to Weinsheimer in response to his January 18th email.
The Justice Department’s difficulty interpreting Biden’s most recent pardons “animated the fact that President Biden was not running the show in his White House and was not the person making decisions and exercising core presidential powers that only belong to him,” Oversight Project Executive Director Mike Howell stated.
“Is this going to be a political talking point, that we refer to Biden as the autopen presidency and everybody laughs, or is the Justice Department going to actually take steps to impose accountability?” Howell questioned.
The Oversight Project did not take long to start digging into the Biden White House’s use of the mechanical signature (autopen) device, having published a memorandum about their findings on March 17th. They argued that the heavy use of the machine is evidence of the president’s mental and physical decline during his years in office.
Additionally, the organization’s research resulted in what they called “Autopen A” and “Autopen B,” having compared the signatures from several presidential documents containing Biden’s signature. Many signatures on documents granting clemency had an identical period after Biden’s middle initial, “R”, which was missing from several other signatures that had an identical symbol for “Jr.”, according to the Oversight Project.
They also drew attention to the former president’s pardons issued on January 19th, his final day in office, which, despite Weinsheimer having flagged concerns, included the following individuals:
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
- Members of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Protest on the U.S. Capitol
- Five members of the Biden family, including the president’s siblings and spouses.
In addition, the organization included evidence that Biden had gone golfing in the Virgin Islands on December 30, 2022, the “same day that six criminals were granted clemency” from his office, including one convicted of armed second-degree murder.
The Oversight Project is now calling for acts of clemency granted by the Biden White House to be deemed illegal, and for criminals to be barred from release or rearrested.
Later, the investigation by the watchdog group picked up steam, with the information spreading all the way back to the current GOP president’s office. The Trump administration responded in June with a presidential memo directing a formal investigation into the allegations against Biden’s aides.
“Given clear indications that President Biden lacked the capacity to exercise his Presidential authority, if his advisors secretly used the mechanical signature pen to conceal this incapacity, while taking radical executive actions all in his name, that would constitute an unconstitutional wielding of the power of the Presidency, a circumstance that would have implications for the legality and validity of numerous executive actions undertaken in Biden’s name,” the memorandum stated.
Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has also expressed skepticism over the vast number of pardons issued by the former Democrat president, telling The Daily Signal in a statement: “New reporting confirms Biden White House staff took executive action without the president’s approval.” He promised the House Oversight Committee will continue to seek answers and “prevent such an abuse from happening again.”
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