Former President Joe Biden defended his decision to use an autopen for signing his final pardons, explaining the administration’s rationale for employing the device in a recently published interview.
The conversation with The New York Times focused specifically on his use of the autopen to execute the last round of clemency measures at the close of his term. In those final weeks, Biden granted pardons and clemency to over 1,500 individuals, what the White House described at the time as the largest single-day act of clemency by any U.S. president.
In his interview, Biden told the Times he “made every decision” on his own. “We’re talking about [granting clemency to] a whole lot of people,” Biden told the paper.
But that said, the Times reported that the then-president “did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people,” according to Biden himself and his aides.
“Rather, after extensive discussion of different possible criteria, [Biden] signed off on the standards he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction in sentence,” the Times’s report said.
Rather than repeatedly requesting that the president sign updated versions of official documents, his staff employed an autopen to affix Biden’s signature to the final drafts.
His explanation came amid Republican criticism of his extensive use of the autopen on a large volume of formal paperwork.
In June, President Donald Trump issued a memo to the Justice Department instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi to probe the autopen’s use and assess whether it reflected a decline in Biden’s mental faculties.
“In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former President 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.
“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,” he added.
In June, Trump told reporters he believed using an autopen was “inappropriate,” even though past presidents have employed the device, Fox News reported.
“Usually, when they put documents in front of you, they’re important,” Trump said. “Even if you’re signing ambassadorships or – and I consider that important, I think it’s inappropriate.”
“You have somebody that’s devoting four years of their life or more to being an ambassador. I think you really deserve, that person deserves to get a real signature… not an autopen signature,” he noted further.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has notified a federal court that it is conducting an ongoing review of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as part of a Freedom of Information Act case filed by legal group Judicial Watch.
On Monday, the Department of Justice and Judicial Watch submitted a joint status report regarding the watchdog group’s lawsuit from April about a FOIA request made in February for records related to Epstein, Just the News reported. Part of Judicial Watch’s request was for records “depicting the identities of clients or associates of Epstein.”
The watchdog group filed the lawsuit against both the DOJ and FBI after “they failed to adequately respond to three separate FOIA request.”
In the joint status report that the legal group released Thursday, it says that, regarding any and all Epstein records, “the FBI has run its initial searches and is in the process of reviewing those search results.”
The report also said that for records of communications of FBI Director Kash Patel regarding the Epstein client list, “the FBI’s search efforts are ongoing.”
The government has yet to release any documents or provide details on when they might be made public or how many will ultimately be disclosed, Just the News reported further.