Former President Joe Biden’s chief of staff gave final approval to a number of high-profile preemptive pardons during Biden’s final days in office.
Biden’s purported use of the autopen has been a source of contention for months, with President Donald Trump claiming that thousands of pardons signed by Biden were null and invalid, and that the former president had no idea what documents he was signing using the automated gadget.
On his final day, Biden offered a series of preemptive pardons to officials, including former Chief Medical Advisor to the President Anthony Fauci and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, in an attempt to protect them from Trump’s reprisal.
In an article intended to be his defense for the autopen issue, it was revealed that, while Biden reportedly made the decision in a meeting, Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients gave final approval for the use of the autopen, at least in the cases of Fauci and Milley, according to the New York Times.
On Biden’s final day as president, January 19, he met with his advisors until almost 10 p.m. to discuss different preemptive pardons, according to the Times. According to emails acquired by the Times, at 10:03 p.m., an aide gave Zient’s assistant a summary draft of the official decisions made at the meeting.
At 10:28 p.m., the assistant forwarded the email to Zients and other meeting attendees, asking clearance from Zients and White House deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed, according to the Times. According to the source, Zients replied to all of the emails three minutes later.
“I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons,” Zients said in the email, according to the Times.
The New York Times report further revealed that Biden did not personally approve each name included in the broad, categorical pardons.
“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,” the Times reported.
When asked about the Times’ report, Trump told reporters at the White House Monday that Biden’s alleged use of the autopen amounted to possibly “one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50 to 100 years. I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing, I guarantee you.”
The White House said the report shed light on Biden’s untrustworthiness and accused the Biden administration of engaging in a cover-up.
“The same president who lied through his teeth to the American people for four years about everything from his health to the state of the economy should not be trusted again,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in an email to Fox News. “The Biden administration conducted the most egregious cover-up scheme in American politics… The truth will come out about who was, in fact, running the country sooner or later, just as the truth is emerging about the state of Joe Biden’s cognitive and physical health.”
According to the Pew Research Center, Biden issued 4,245 acts of mercy during his presidency, with 96% of those granted between October 2024 and January.
Trump originally accused Biden of using an autopen to sign crucial clemency forms in March. He has continued to raise the matter, and in June, he wrote a memo instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi to initiate an inquiry into Biden’s use of an autopen, as well as to determine whether the use was caused by a loss in Biden’s mental capacity.
“In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that Biden’s aides abused the power of presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority,” Trump wrote in the memo.
“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history. The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”
A White House official said Trump uses his hand signature for every legally operational or binding document.
Trump has previously admitted that he uses an autopen for letters.