Senior Biden administration officials questioned and criticized how the White House handled pardons and the use of an autopen in the final weeks of the president’s term, Axios reported Saturday, citing internal emails and people familiar with the clemency process.
According to the report, several senior Justice Department officials raised concerns with the White House counsel’s office about the handling and vetting of clemency actions. A person familiar with the process told Axios that after President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, on Dec. 1, 2024, "there was a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon — and then they largely didn't run it by the Justice Department to vet them."
The report said internal emails show Justice Department brass were disturbed by both the speed of the clemency actions and the use of an autopen, a device that produces a facsimile of a signature, to execute some documents. Those officials raised questions internally about whether autopen signatures on clemency instruments would be legally binding and whether the Department of Justice had been given adequate time and information to carry out its customary vetting role.
Three days before Mr. Biden left office, the president announced he was "commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of non-violent drug offenses who are serving disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today under current law, policy and practice," the report noted. The Axios report said concerns among senior Justice Department officials centered on both the pace of the clemency decisions and the extent to which the White House followed standard DOJ review procedures.
The internal messages cited by Axios portray an administration debating how to reconcile a desire to act on criminal-justice reforms with institutional norms that call for Justice Department evaluation of clemency candidates. The report said some officials were worried that the White House had not provided sufficient documentation on nominees for pardon or commutation and that rushing the process could invite legal challenges or hamper enforcement agencies’ ability to implement the decisions.
The use of an autopen in presidential signature processes has drawn scrutiny in other contexts, and questions about formal validity and procedural safeguards have arisen in prior administrations. Axios’ reporting relied on internal emails and interviews with people familiar with the process to describe the internal response within the Justice Department and the White House.
The report did not detail any specific legal actions taken by the Justice Department in response to the concerns. It said senior officials had communicated their objections to the White House counsel’s office, and that those objections were recorded in the internal emails reviewed by Axios.
The coverage adds to ongoing public scrutiny of the administration’s final-term clemency decisions and the mechanics by which they were carried out. Observers and legal scholars have debated the scope of presidential clemency powers and the procedural norms that typically accompany the Justice Department’s role in advising on such decisions; the Axios report describes internal dissent inside the administration over whether those norms were observed in the final days.
