A top government watchdog group has revealed that correspondence between then-President Joe Biden’s staff and veteran Department of Justice (DOJ) officials raised concerns about his use of the autopen to sign presidential pardons.
The Oversight Project found that staffers indicated they felt the autopen pardons were “highly problematic,” Fox News reported.
President Donald Trump’s administration is scrutinizing thousands of pardons signed in the final days of Biden’s presidency as some wonder if they’re now null and void.
Besides the use of the autopen, Biden’s pardons were unconventional in how they were structured in granting clemency to categories of criminals.
In one of the emails now under review, then-Assistant Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer raised concerns among other staff members about how 2,500 pardons signed by Biden were characterized.
“[T]he White House has described those who received commutations as people convicted of non-violent drug offenses,” Weinsheimer said in a January 18 email.
“I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading,” he added.
Some pardons were indeed granted to criminals who should have remained behind bars.
“As you know, even with the exceedingly limited review we were permitted to do of the individuals we believed you might be considering for commutation action, we initially identified 19 that were highly problematic,” Weinsheimer continued in his email.
Those included Ferrone Cliaborne and Terrence Richardson, who were “sentenced to life imprisonment for drug trafficking offenses during which a police officer was killed.”
The DOJ had “voluminous” documentation from law enforcement and the victims’ families about why they should have been let free.
Kyle Brosnan, vice president at the Oversight Project, noted that the emails between Biden staffers and the Justice Department show that it was worried about “vague” language in the blanket pardons that seemed to be “illegally delegated” to his aides.
There was also the problem of exactly which criminals would be pardoned if they were convicted of multiple offenses and which warrants would apply.
“Later in the email, he was like, ‘Look, I read the statement you put out in the president’s name, saying you’ve released a bunch of non-violent drug offenders,” Brosnan recounted of Weinsheimer’s email.
“You’ve got murderers on your list today.
“So I’m trying to figure out what the president wants here for this funky warrant.'”
At one point, a Department of Justice official told White House staff to stop with the line about nonviolent offenders “because it was untrue or at least misleading.”
Meanwhile, Biden admitted that the way he went about the pardons was irregular, as he recalled in July during an interview, which Brosnan cited.
“Mr. Biden did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people, he and aides confirmed,” Brosnan said of Biden’s admission.
“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.”
It was only people like retired Gen. Mark Milley whom aides discussed by name, while the rest were up to White House staffers based on Biden’s given criteria.
“Biden did not pardon individual people, but laid out categories of types of people to release and left it to the staff to figure out who meets that criteria,” Brosnan said, noting that even those lists were signed off on with an autopen.
From what Brosnan and others have uncovered about the process for pardons, it’s clear that Biden wasn’t picking out individuals to grant clemency to as it is.
However, another revelation this week gives more fuel to the fire for those who believe Biden may not have been part of the decision-making process.
Questions about his mental fitness plagued Biden’s entire presidency, and now it seems that keeping Biden isolated was part of the plan to hide that fact, if what former White House spokesman Ian Sams has to say is true.
Sams, who sat down for an interview with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, said that he only spoke personally with Biden twice in his two years on the job, the New York Post reported.
“This was a huge interview today, and I think it contradicts everything that the former Biden people are saying with respect to the president’s mental fitness,” Comer said.
Another White House staffer corroborated Sams’s assertion, noting that he mainly got his “marching orders” from communications chief Anita Dunn.
Comer believes this could point to a broader issue.
“It raises serious concerns and serious questions about who was calling shots at the White House,” Comer said.
“If the White House spokesperson was being shielded from the president of the United States, who was operating the Oval Office?”
It’s likely all of these pardons will stand despite the use of the autopen and the irregularities in how they were meted out.
However, it vindicates those who were sounding the alarm about Biden’s mental state while in office.
It also hints at a possible “conspiracy theory” coming true if Biden wasn’t the one making the decisions.
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