Former President Joe Biden, in an interview with the New York Times published on Sunday, said that he personally made every clemency and pardon decision during the last few weeks of his presidency — including those made with an autopen.
However, he and aides told the Times that some decisions for large batches of pardons were based on broad categories that various people fell into, not based on reviewing individuals on a case-by-case basis. Biden said he approved the categories and standards for choosing who to pardon.
“I made every single one of those. And — including the categories, when we set this up to begin with,” Biden said of the clemency and pardon decisions.
In December, Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted on tax evasion and federal gun charges; commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people on home confinement; and pardoned 39 people who were convicted of nonviolent crimes.
In January, he pardoned nearly 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders; on the last day of his presidency, he issued preemptive pardons to potential targets of the incoming Trump administration and to several close family members.
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have also focused their ire on Biden’s use of an autopen device to sign pardons and other documents, claiming either that the pardons Biden approved are void because they were signed using an autopen, or that it matters who controlled the autopen when the pardons were signed. Trump has said he has used an autopen for some trivial matters, but criticized its use for pardons.
In June, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether the Biden administration sought to conspire to cover up his mental state while in office, and to look through Biden’s use of the autopen.
Biden defended the use of autopen.
“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.”
“They’re liars,” Biden also said of Trump and Republicans. “They know it … they’ve had a pretty good thing going here. They’ve done so badly. They’ve lied so consistently about almost everything they’re doing. The best thing they can do is try to change the focus and focus on something else.”
He called the furor “consistent with Trump’s game plan all along … if I told you three years ago, we’d have a president doing this, I think you’d look at me in the eye and say, ‘What, are you, crazy?’”
Asked about the Times’ report Monday morning, Trump called Biden’s use of autopen a “tremendous scandal.” The president once again claimed without evidence that Biden wasn’t aware of what was being signed.
“I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing, I guarantee you,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
Biden’s latest remarks come as Trump and Republicans continue to argue that Biden was not the one making decisions to grant pardons or clemencies, or in charge of decisions more broadly during his presidency.
In May, Senate Republicans announced their plans to launch the probe into Biden’s mental fitness while in office, including his use of autopen.
