President Donald Trump wasn’t just blowing smoke earlier this year about the shady nature of former President Joe Biden’s last-minute coddling of criminals.
He was exposing what looks more and more like a blatant example of unconstitutional fraud via Biden’s abuse of the autopen.
On March 17, President Trump declared on Truth Social that the autopen-signed pardons issued by Biden were “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.”
Trump had written earlier in the week, “Everything was signed by autopen — almost everything.”
The president was right to sound the alarm, as it’s now clear Biden didn’t even see the final list of names – thousands of people whose sentences he pardoned or commuted – or who were preemptively offered sweeping clemency.
According to The New York Times, Biden told the paper late Sunday night, “I made every single one of those.”
But that’s simply not true.
The newspaper went on to report, “Mr. Biden did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people, he and aides confirmed. Rather, after extensive discussion of different possible criteria, he signed off on the standards he wanted.”
“Biden did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons…Rather than ask Biden to keep signing revised versions, his staff waited and then ran the final version thru the autopen, which they saw as…routine”https://t.co/TwhbvujB6c pic.twitter.com/4OHRSl93or
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) July 13, 2025
Since Biden never saw the list of people the autopen pardoned, should all of those pardons be rescinded?
The Times reported that on Jan. 19 – Biden’s last full day in office – he held a late-night meeting with aides to discuss categories of clemency.
An aide to Biden’s White House counsel, Ed Siskel, then sent a draft summary of Biden’s “decisions” at 10:03 p.m.
That summary went to an assistant of Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, who forwarded it to Zients himself and another aide.
Then that same assistant sent a final version to another staffer, copying other aides.
Three minutes later, at 10:31 p.m., Zients wrote, “I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons.”
That was it. That was the moment of approval.
Not from Biden – from Zients, who no one voted for and who had no authority to make executive decisions.
Jeff Zients, 46th President of the United States apparently pic.twitter.com/wuemwcrGKZ
— Anthony Galli (@RallyWithGalli) July 14, 2025
Let’s break this down.
Biden spoke to aides, those aides wrote a summary, and another aide sent it to the person who managed the autopen.
Then Zients said go, and pardons were signed.
The problem? Biden didn’t sign them. Biden didn’t even approve the final list.
Worse still, the person responsible for the autopen, Rachel Feldman, got the list before Zients even gave the go-ahead.
House Oversight Chair James Comer told Axios after reading the Times report, “The House Oversight Committee will continue pursuing answers about this historic scandal.”
They should.
Because Biden didn’t approve those pardons. Jeff Zients did.
And the American people deserve to know who walked free because of it.
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