President Autopen Admits Scandal to NYT
Joe Biden and The New York Times essentially confirmed that the former president did not always even know who he was pardoning before a staffer with an autopen did it for him.
Did you know that a powerful government official used a “digital signature” in place of a real one? NBC News is on it:
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., has been leading the probe into Joe Biden’s cognitive state during his presidency, with Republicans alleging that Biden’s occasional use of an “autopen” to sign documents — a practice other presidents have done as well — demonstrated that he wasn’t fully in control or aware of what his administration was doing.
But documents show that some of the letters and subpoena notices Comer has sent out in connection to his investigation have been signed using a digital signature — not written by the congressman himself.
Oh.
Come.
On.
The issue here is not the use of digital signatures, which are a feature of modern technology. The issue is the use of a device called an autopen, which a clearly cognitively disabled president’s staff deployed to do critical things like pardon Anthony Fauci, the man at the center of the government’s tyranny over COVID. Obviously, Biden and his team understood the issue at the time because the president physically used a pen to sign the pardon that mattered most — the one for his son, Hunter Biden, which also protected Joe.
How many of the thousands of pardons and clemencies — including nearly every convict on the federal death row — signed by autopen did Biden even really know about? How much of Biden’s presidency was handled by staffers wielding an autopen?
This is news again because Joe Biden made it news. In excerpts from a phone interview with The New York Times published Sunday, we learned that the former president insisted he “made every single one of those” decisions in question.
Did he, though?
In a companion story, the Times reports, “Mr. Biden did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people, he and aides confirmed. Rather, after extensive discussion of different possible criteria, he signed off on the standards he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction in sentence.” The Times also confirmed that he wasn’t necessarily the one giving the final word — including on the pardons for Fauci and others — and that the staffers who did give the president’s instructions weren’t necessarily present when he gave those instructions.
The former president explained that “there’s categories” for the pardons and commutations. “So the only things that really we read off names for were, for example, you know, was I, what was I going to do about, for example, Mark Milley? Mark’s a good guy,” Biden said. (That’s debatable.) “We know how vindictive Trump is, and I’ve no doubt they would have gone after Mark for no good reason. The general, you know. So, they may read off his name — what’d I want?”
He just admitted that he only knew specifics on some of the pardons and commutations. That speaks to the root issue — whether Biden was making the decisions himself or whether unelected staffers were acting on his behalf.
As Ben Shapiro notes:
What’s amazing is that his aide admitted the quiet part out loud; Biden said, “Here’s a broad category of people such as nonviolent drug offenders. Go do something about it.” His people scurried around and came up with a list, which kept changing. Instead of informing the President of the United States who was on the list and what their specific crimes were, they just ran it through the auto pen based on a giant category.
As for his cognitive state, it’s notable that the Times carefully categorized the interview excerpts, likely to help Biden look more coherent. But the reporters could only do so much. Imagine what the actual phone conversation sounded like when there were transcribed quotes like this: “I made every single one of those. And — including the categories, when we set this up to begin with. And so — but I understand why Trump would think that, because obviously, I guess, he doesn’t focus much. Anyway, so — yes, I made every decision.”
I imagine if we listened to the whole interview, we might even conclude that he’s “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Nevertheless, Biden says Republicans are “liars,” which is rather hilarious given his own penchant for incessant lying. He lies about nearly everything he’s ever done in his life, yet he accuses Republicans of misrepresenting his mental health during his single term. For example, he falsely told the Times, “My family didn’t do anything wrong.” Remember, we’re talking about how, among other things, he pardoned his family of literal crimes.
If Republicans are lying about Biden’s mental state, why did his former White House physician, Kevin O'Connor, plead the Fifth Amendment so many times during his House testimony?
Biden is right that “the autopen is, you know, is legal.” In 2005, George W. Bush’s Department of Justice officially approved its use, and the courts are unlikely to invalidate anything signed with one given its frequent use by multiple presidents.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem with its use by a president who was so evidently disabled. “The autopen, I think, is maybe one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50-100 years. This is a tremendous scandal,” President Donald Trump said Monday. “I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing. I guarantee it.”
It is indeed an enormous scandal that, for the better part of four years, we did not have a president so much as a puppet. Joe Biden was not up to the job when he was elected in November 2020, and he only deteriorated from there. And for four years, the Leftmedia helped Team Biden cover it up.
