Trump launches investigation into Biden’s use of autopen to pardon family and inmates

A senior Justice Department official has reportedly been instructed to investigate clemency decisions made by former President Joe Biden during the final months of his presidency.

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed Biden used an autopen during his presidency, raising the issue as he responded to Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis last month.

“Who was operating the autopen? This is a very serious thing,” he told reporters in May. “We had a president that didn’t sign anything. He autopenned almost anything.”

On Wednesday, Trump raised it again, this time in relation to negotiations with Iran over the country’s nuclear program.

“The AUTOPEN should have stopped Iran a long time ago from ‘enriching.’ Under our potential Agreement — WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM!” he wrote on TruthSocial.

According to an email seen by Reuters, Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, stated the investigation will look into whether Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.”

The investigation, launched at the behest of a senior official appointed during Trump’s presidency, will focus on pardons granted to Biden family members and inmates on death row.

The email stated that Martin’s investigation is focused on preemptive pardons Biden issued to several members of his family and clemency that spared 37 federal inmates from the death penalty, converting their sentences to life in prison.

Just before he relinquished the presidency to Trump on January 20, Biden pardoned five members of his family, saying he wanted to protect them from future politically motivated investigations. The pardons went to Biden’s siblings James Biden, Frank Biden and Valerie Biden Owens as well as their spouses, John Owens and Sara Biden. Biden on December 1 pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who had pleaded guilty to tax violations and was convicted on firearms-related charges.

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An autopen is a device used to affix a signature to a document automatically. Trump and his supporters have made a variety of unfounded claims about Biden’s use of the device. At the same time, the president invalidated his actions or suggested that he was not fully aware of the consequences of these actions. It is not known whether Biden used an autopen on pardons.

Martin’s email did not specify which members of the Biden family were being investigated. It also did not make clear who directed Martin to launch the investigation.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Biden spokesperson did not immediately provide comment.

The U.S. Constitution grants the president broad power to issue pardons, which can wipe away federal criminal convictions, or commutations, which can modify sentences.

Trump himself has made extensive use of executive clemency. For instance, he granted clemency on January 20 to all of the nearly 1,600 of his supporters who faced criminal charges in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was a failed attempt to prevent congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump. Martin previously served as the interim U.S. attorney in Washington before his nomination for the post was withdrawn in the Senate.

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Martin told reporters last month that he viewed the presidential pardon power as “plenary,” meaning it is absolute.

“If you use the autopen for pardon power, I don’t think that that’s necessarily a problem,” Martin said during a May 13 press conference, adding that he still felt the Biden pardons warranted scrutiny. The investigation appears designed to use the Justice Department to amplify questions about Biden’s health and mental acuity, a conversation that has intensified in recent weeks following his cancer diagnosis and a new book revealing Democratic concerns last year about Biden’s condition.

A separate investigation into Biden’s alleged use of an autopen being run by the House Oversight Committee, led by Republican Representative James Comer.

Comer said if the investigation proves that Biden did not know about the signing of executive orders by autopen, those orders would be “thrown out in court”.

Speaking on Foc News’s Sunday Morning Futures, as reported in the Washington Examiner, Comer said: “...if we can find information that would lead us to believe that Joe Biden had no knowledge of those executive orders being signed in his name, then I think that the Trump administration could get them thrown out in court, and then Trump would be able to execute his agenda a whole lot easier without all the Trump-proofing that happened with the autopen at the end of the Biden administration.”

Biden, who is 82, dropped his reelection bid last year amid questions about his mental acuity following a disastrous presidential debate performance. Biden was the oldest person to serve as U.S. president, and Trump is the second oldest.

Biden’s closest aides have dismissed those concerns, saying Biden was fully capable of making important decisions.

No evidence has emerged to suggest that Biden did not intend to issue the pardons. In addition, a 2005 Justice Department memo found it legitimate for a subordinate to use an autopen for the president’s signature.