I have avoided writing about the Biden autopen issue, because as scandalous as it was to have a President who couldn’t be bothered to show up for work, I considered it way down on the importance scale of destruction Scranton Joey did to our country. I certainly don’t approve of the pardons he issued, but he had the authority to do it, and there is nothing anybody can do about it, unless there’s a reason to question their legality – which there now is.
There’s nothing inherently illegal about using a machine to apply the President’s signature to a legal document. The President’s power to pardon is granted by the Constitution. A pardon is granted by his decision, not his signature. The signature is just documentation of his decision. Were we to elect a quadriplegic as our Chief Executive, nobody would question his use of an autopen – provided there is a record ensuring that the signature is an expression of his will. It would be reasonable to expect witnesses or at least a recording of him ordering the signature.
As it pertains to the Biden orgy of pardons, the question has always been: is there a record that Joey “Soft Serve” ordered the pardons, which were signed mechanically rather than personally. I.e., do the signed documents reflect the will of the President?
Recently, we have learned that there is a record of Joe Biden’s wishes relative to a subset of the pardons issued – those pertaining to drug convictions. The problem is, it appears that what Biden authorized, is not what was done – with an autopen, in his name.
In an interview with the New York Times, Joe Biden stated that all pardons were done with his consent and approval, according to standards and a framework set by him. The framework he had provided his staff was for non-violent drug offenders to be pardoned. Frankly I think it’s a perversion of the Constitution to issue pardons to a whole class of people without considering the merits of each on a case-by-case basis, but that’s a subject for another debate. He did it, and so have other Presidents.
I presume that his “non-violent drug offender” decision was documented somewhere in his presidential papers (email, memo, etc.). But even if not, his verbal statement serves as a clear record of who he was giving clemency to.
But a problem arose when Biden’s staff provided a warrant for the pardons to DoJ lawyers. Just two days before Biden was to leave office, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer sent an email to the White House, expressing his concern that the warrant was “highly problematic” because it lacked clarity, and could facilitate the release of violent offenders – which was not his understanding of the President’s intent. That’s a lawyerly way of saying: Hey guys, this doesn’t look like what I heard the President say he wanted.
But Weinsheimer’s email was sent on January 18, and the clock was running out to throw nails in front of the Trump convoy rolling into DC. So, for expedience, the DoJ was cut out of the clemency review process, and a crap load of pardons were signed by autopen. That is, all but Hunter’s. Joe did that one personally.
Was Weinsheimer’s concern valid? The issue is illustrated by pardon recipient Russel McIntosh. McIntosh was convicted of murdering a woman and her child, when she threatened to expose his drug operation. Does that pardon meet the will of the President?
- Drug related? Check.
- Non-violent? Not hardly.
Clearly the McIntosh pardon was outside the stated Presidential standards and framework, as articulated by Joe Biden himself. So, in McIntosh’s case, if the autopen operator was not acting according to the President’s will, is the pardon valid? Alarmingly, McIntosh is but one of many violent offenders who were pardoned in the closing days of the Biden administration.
Given that clemency was given to violent drug offenders – counter to the decision of the President – we can presume that somebody on the White House staff, committed a fraud by applying Biden’s signature to pardons, which he didn’t authorize. Whoever that was, broke the law, undermined the legitimacy of the executive branch, and endangered the safety of all Americans.
We now know that there is reason to question the validity of Presidential signatures for federal convicts. But will future document releases from the Trump administration reveal that the problem is even bigger? Will Bondi, Patel, Gabbard, and company discover evidence of similar deviation from presidential pardon guidance for Biden family members (allegedly involved in influence peddling) and government officials (allegedly attempting to overthrow the government)?
And what about the mountain of executive orders signed by President “Autopen”? Joe Biden told Speaker Johnson that he never signed an executive order blocking the international sale of liquid natural gas. But the executive order is there for everyone to see, with Biden’s signature, done by autopen. Does the signed order represent his decision, or not? How about the other 161 executive orders?
It’s hard to overstate the mess that Biden and his staff have left for President Trump to clean up.
People exercising the power of the Presidency, without the consent of the President, seems like a rather big deal, no? Unfortunately, it’s an issue that can only be resolved by the Supreme Court – which is ideologically divided and constitutionally derelict in confronting controversial issues. I fear that like challenges to the 2020 election; the court will simply refuse to look at the evidence. Hence, we don’t know if the court will fix this mess, or through inaction will empower swamp dwellers to continue defrauding the people in the President’s name. I fear that like Roe v. Wade, it may take half a century or more to clarify that the President is the person elected by the people, and not whoever has the key to the autopen office.
Author Bio: John Green is a retired engineer and political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He spent his career designing complex defense systems, developing high performance organizations, and doing corporate strategic planning. He is a contributor to American Thinker, The American Spectator, and the American Free News Network. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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