Biden denies White House aides granted clemency without his knowledge

Joe Biden has denied claims that his circle of aides acted without his knowledge when he granted a slew of pardons and commutations in the final days and hours of his presidency.

“I made every single one of those,” the former president told the New York Times in an interview published on Sunday when asked about claims that he was incapacitated and unaware of clemency decisions. Biden called the people making those claims “liars”, adding, “They know it.”

Donald Trump’s successor and predecessor in the Oval Office issued three sets of clemency during his final days, including reducing sentences of hundreds of non-violent drug offenders and commuting the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life without parole.

He pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, of convictions on federal gun and tax charges, too. And he also granted pre-emptive pardons to other members of his immediate family, along with the former top public health adviser Dr Anthony Fauci and ex-joint chiefs of staff chair Gen Mark Milley.

Conservatives have alleged that the commutations and pardons, along with executive orders passed during his term, are not binding because they were signed using an autopen printer to reproduce a signature and could therefore not be verified as being directly authorized by Biden himself.

In Sunday’s interview, Biden hit back at that suggestion, telling the Times he hadn’t personally signed the orders simply “because there were a lot of them”.

“The autopen … is legal,” Biden said. “As you know, other presidents used it, including Trump. But the point is that … we’re talking about a whole lot of people.”

Biden’s remarks come days after Kevin O’Connor, his White House doctor, declined to answer questions from a Republican-led congressional committee looking into the former president’s mental acuity while in office – and whether he was aware of documents signed with his “autopen” signature.

The House oversight committee chair, James Comer, slammed O’Connor’s refusal to answer questions and assertion of his constitutional rights against self-incrimination, saying: “It’s clear there was a conspiracy to cover up President Biden’s cognitive decline.”

Trump has claimed that Biden’s autopen pardons issued to lawmakers and staff on the congressional committee that investigated the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021 have no force because they were not signed by hand.

“In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!” Trump wrote on his social media site in March.

Two months before that post, Trump began his second presidency by issuing 1,500 unconditional pardons or commutations to supporters of his who carried out the Capitol attack after he lost the 2020 election to Biden.

Trump, who signs orders with Sharpie, often before media cameras, has also used the autopen. But Trump claims he does that “only for very unimportant papers” or signing return letters that come from “letters of support for young people, from people that aren’t feeling well, etc. But to sign pardons and all of the things that he signed with an autopen is disgraceful.”

No law governs a president’s use of an autopen. In 2005, an opinion from the US justice department said an autopen could be used to sign legislation, and Barack Obama became the first president to do so in 2011.

Biden has previously pushed back on Republican claims he was unaware of what was being issued in his name.

“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,” he said in June. “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”

In his most recent remarks, to the Times, Biden accused Republicans of using the autopen issue as diversion.

“They’ve lied so consistently about almost everything they’re doing,” he said. “The best thing they can do is try to change the focus and focus on something else. And … I think that’s what this is about.”