Former President Joe Biden and his team have a new defense regarding his autopen scandal: Just trust the man and the aides who lied to the country for four years.
Biden has attempted to get out in front of the scandal revolving around the use of an autopen when it came to the mass pardons and commutations the former president gave out at the end of his presidency. After an interview with Biden, the New York Times says he “orally granted all pardons and commutations,” with Biden himself saying, “I made every decision.”
The New York Times report attempts to downplay this, which is why Biden spoke to that publication in the first place, and yet the best it has is that Biden approved broad standards for pardons and commutations, and his staff used the autopen to push through the list of names. Biden issued 4,425 pardons and commutations, more than any president in history, issuing 96% of them between Oct. 1, 2024, and Jan. 20, 2025. That means the best defense of Biden is that he verbally approved broad standards that released thousands of criminals, including corrupt politicians and fraudsters, and took 37 out of 40 murderers off of federal death row.
Now, ask yourself how much of this from Biden you are supposed to believe, given what we know about how far he mentally deteriorated during (and before) his presidency. Liberal journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson reported that Biden’s presidency was run by a “politburo” of aides, and that Biden was forgetting the names of lifelong aides in 2019. On top of that, we have the very likely possibility that Biden and his team were covering up his cancer diagnosis until after his term was over.
Most notable for the purposes of comparison, though, we have House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) revelation that Biden did not know what was in one of the executive orders he signed. In early 2024, Johnson questioned why Biden paused new permits for liquefied natural gas exports to Europe. Johnson claims Biden said he didn’t do that, and that the order only authorized a study of the effects of LNG. Either Biden did not know what he was signing, or he didn’t know what his aides were signing on his behalf.
BIDEN’S STAFF APPROVED MASS LAST-MINUTE PARDONS WITH AUTOPEN
That was one executive order. Do you really think Biden “orally granted” all of the 4,000-plus pardons and commutations his administration handed out in the waning days of his presidency?
The only certain thing about this story is that Biden and his team do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. They lied about Biden’s health and cognitive state for years, handing the power of the presidency to a handful of unelected aides with the goal of winning a second term. Biden and his team do not deserve to be believed, and they deserve every investigation that is coming their way for allowing the country to operate without a president for the past four years.