Biden White House Archived / Flickr
Former President Joe Biden admitted in a newly released New York Times interview that he authorized the use of an autopen to finalize last-minute pardons during his last day in office — news that has escalated a growing controversy surrounding his mental acuity.
In a July 10 interview with the Times, Biden confirmed his White House staff used the autopen — a mechanical device used to reproduce a person’s signature — to execute a sweeping wave of clemency grants. According to excerpts from the interview released July 13, Biden said, “I made every single one of those,” but added that the device was used “because there were a lot of them.”
The clemency grants made on Biden’s last day in office included pardons for his three siblings and two of their spouses, former Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, and the seven members of the now-disbanded House January 6th Committee. It remains unclear which of these were signed by an autopen.
According to a separate July 13 Times report, Biden met with senior aides until nearly 10 p.m. Jan. 19 to discuss clemency criteria. The outlet said Biden approved “categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people” rather than reviewing each case individually.
Emails the outlet obtained show a summary of the decisions was emailed to Chief of Staff Jeff Zients’ assistant at 10:03 p.m. The email was then forwarded to Zients and Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed at 10:28 p.m., who were asked to issue a final approval on the decisions.
“I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons,” Zients replied in an email three minutes later, according to the Times.
According to the Pew Research Center, Biden ultimately issued 4,245 acts of clemency during his presidency, 96% of which came between October 2024 and January 2025.
The news has been met with backlash from several Republicans, including President Donald Trump.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office July 14, President Donald Trump called it “maybe one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50-100 years.”
“I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing,” Trump added. “I guarantee you.”
According to FOX News, Trump first accused Biden of using an autopen in March. He later escalated the claim in a June memo to Attorney General Pam Bondi, urging her to launch an investigation into the scandal.
In the memo, Trump wrote, “Biden’s aides abused the power of presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., echoed those concerns in a series of posts on X, claiming Biden’s “staff quietly added violent criminals to the list and ran them through the autopen without telling him.”
“They may have broken several federal laws,” Schmitt wrote in the thread. He accused the administration of “fraud,” “forgery,” “misuse of government property,” “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” and “obstruction of justice.”
Biden, however, defended his use of the autopen in the July 10 interview, saying it has precedent.
“The autopen is, you know, legal,” he said. “As you know, other presidents used it, including Trump. But the point is that, you know, we’re talking about a whole lot of people.”
Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Biden’s autopen use and his mental fitness earlier this year. Interviews are expected through August.
The probe intensified after Axios published audio in May from Biden’s 2023 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said in a May 16 FOX interview that the audio raises serious doubts about “who was actually making the decisions.”
“Clearly, from that interview,” he said, “which was many, many months prior to the heavy use of the autopen, Joe Biden wasn’t capable of making decisions. He wasn’t coherent.”
