- AG Pam Bondi has opened a review into Biden’s use of an autopen to sign last‑minute pardons after a GOP Oversight report alleged a White House “cover‑up.”
- Constitutional scholars and precedent say autopen signatures are valid if the president authorized the decisions, weakening GOP calls to void pardons.
- The dispute intensifies partisan warfare, tying autopen controversy to broader concerns about executive power and Trump’s ongoing attacks.
In a move that’s reignited partisan fireworks just months into the new administration, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Monday that her office is scrutinizing former President Joe Biden’s use of an autopen to sign a flurry of high-profile pardons and commutations in his final days.
The review, prompted by a scathing House Oversight Committee report, centers on whether Biden personally greenlit these actions amid allegations of his declining health and a supposed White House “cover-up.”
But constitutional scholars are pouring cold water on Republican calls to void the pardons, pointing to decades of precedent that greenlights such mechanical signatures—as long as the president calls the shots.
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House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) fired the latest salvo last week with a letter to Bondi and a committee report that paints a damning picture.
It accuses Biden’s inner circle of shielding evidence of his cognitive slide, including the lack of written records for autopen-signed executive actions like the December 2024 pardons.
“The report claimed the White House didn’t record Biden’s approval for some executive actions signed by autopen, including the pardons signed in the final days of the Biden White House,” the document states.
It goes further, declaring all such actions “deems void” without handwritten proof, and demands a full probe into “Biden aides accused by Republicans of coordinating a ‘cover-up’ within the White House.”
This isn’t Comer’s first rodeo on the issue.
For months, President Donald Trump has been hammering the autopen drumbeat on his social media feeds, blasting the pardons as “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT” because they were “done by Autopen.” Just his usual tantrums we are all too familiar with.
Trump’s ire peaked over Biden’s preemptive shields for family members—Hunter, James, and others—whom he feared might face political targeting in a second Trump term.
Bondi wasted no time responding.
In a statement posted on X, she wrote: “My team has already initiated a review of the Biden administration’s reported use of autopen for pardons.”
What Were the Pardons? A Mercy Blitz in Biden’s Twilight
Biden’s late-term clemency spree was sweeping.
He preemptively pardoned family members over concerns they could become potential Trump targets.
Beyond that, he commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of non-violent drug offenses and 1,500 in home confinement, and he reduced sentences for 37 of the 40 people on death row to life without possibility of parole.
Biden himself pushed back hard in a July New York Times interview, insisting: “every single” clemency decision was his call.
“Biden told the New York Times in July that he made ‘every single’ clemency decision.”
The Legal Lowdown: Precedent Trumps Paper Trails
Here’s where the GOP’s thundercloud fizzles.
Legal experts, speaking to outlets like Axios in recent months, have repeatedly flagged that autopen use is as American as apple pie for presidents under pressure.
A pivotal 2005 memorandum opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel laid it out plainly: the president may sign a bill by directing a subordinate to “affix the President’s signature to it.”
Crucially, it added: “we are not suggesting that the President may delegate the decision to approve and sign a bill, only that, having made this decision, he may direct a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to the bill.”
The memo drove home: “The president ‘need not be present when his signature is affixed.'”
Other presidents have leaned on this.
President Obama authorized the autopen for the 2011 Patriot Act extension.
Even Trump, in a lighter moment, quipped he might use it “to send some young person a letter.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) tried to rewrite history Tuesday, calling the practice “unprecedented” and falsely claiming “no previous president had an autopen” or “had the audacity” to have things signed “when they didn’t even know what was in it.” That is Mike Johnson doing what he does best, lying and spamming nonsense.
Democrats pounced, with Oversight’s top Democrat, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), labeling the probe a “sham.”
He argued the testimonies prove “the former President authorized every executive order, pardon, and use of the autopen.”
In their own punchy counter-report, Democrats asserted: “not a single witness could corroborate Republican claims that the autopen was used to issue an executive order, presidential memorandum, or any form of clemency without President Biden’s knowledge or authorization.”
They even flipped the script, accusing Republicans of turning a “blind eye” to Trump’s offhand admission that he didn’t sign his proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act and that “other people handled it.”
Trump’s Expanding Executive Orbit
This autopen dust-up is just one thread in a larger tapestry of Trump 2.0’s boundary-pushing.
As Axios‘ “Behind the Curtain” series has chronicled, the president is asserting the right to unilaterally deploy the military “wherever, whenever” and act as “the sole judge and jury of his own actions.”
Why it matters: These moves could echo for future presidents, with little check from a conservative Supreme Court or GOP Congress.
Even more chilling: The administration’s foray into policing “speech, morality, and punishment of individual citizens at a level of micromanagement rarely, if ever, witnessed in America.”
The official White House X account’s regal renderings amid “No Kings” rallies underscore the vibe—executive power on steroids.
And for a cheeky aside? Trump’s team trolled Biden with an autopen-scrawled “signature” in lieu of a portrait on his “Walk of Fame” display.
Bondi’s review could drag on, but don’t bet on courts shredding those pardons.
The Constitution’s pardon clause is a blank check for presidents, and autopens don’t cash it differently.
Still, in D.C.’s echo chamber, this fuels the eternal grudge match: Trump’s vendetta versus Biden’s legacy.
Also Read: A DOJ Whistleblower Now Makes Revelation That Undermines the Judicial System’s Integrity
