Several months ago, the Biden administration's autopen scandal hit the news.
It was revealed that many of the pardons and other documents issued during Joe Biden's term in office were signed with the autopen, making people wonder if the former president even knew what he was supposedly approving.
Biden has finally broken his silence on the matter, insisting it was all his call.
After the autopen scandal was reported, President Donald Trump suggested that Biden’s pardons should be nullified.
He posted to Truth Social, "The 'Pardons' that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen."
Trump continued, “In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!”
Since then, more investigations have taken place to look at every signature of Biden’s while in office, and it looks like the autopen was used more often than not.
One of the Biden officials who had been given authorization to use the autopen was Neera Tanden, who was recently interviewed by the House Oversight Committee.
Tanden, the former director of Biden's Domestic Policy Council, stated that she had no real idea who was giving her the final thumbs up to approve these documents.
After her testimony, House Oversight chair James Comer (R-KY) stated, "Ms. Tanden testified that she had minimal interaction with President Biden, despite wielding tremendous authority. She explained that to obtain approval for autopen signatures, she would send decision memos to members of the President’s inner circle and had no visibility of what occurred between sending the memo and receiving it back with approval.”
He continued, “Her testimony raises serious questions about who was really calling the shots in the Biden White House amid the President’s obvious decline. We will continue to pursue the truth for the American people."
Biden just gave an interview to the New York Times, claiming that he “made every decision” when it came to issuing pardons and executive orders.
The report claimed that Biden gave the pardon committee guidelines to meet for grants of clemency, so not every name was approved by Biden, technically. The report stated, "Rather, after extensive discussion of different possible criteria, [Biden] signed off on the standards he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction in sentence.”
The report further stated that rather than ask Biden to sign updated versions of documents, the autopen was used instead, which now begs to question if the then-president ever knew that the documents had been altered.
While Biden was clearly trying to add clarity to reporting on this, I think the Times piece just serves up more questions to be answered. From my perspective, I don’t doubt for a second that staffers were playing God with the autopen, knowing that Biden was an empty vessel whom they could manipulate. Now, Biden is just trying to save face, but I think history will not be kind to his presidency. And after he passes, I think the floodgates will truly open as to what was really happening in the White House on Biden’s watch.
