Former President Joe Biden has fired another shot at Republican claims that he was not in control of his lame-duck pardons issued by autopen.
In an interview with The New York Times published Sunday, Democrat Biden, whose alleged cognitive decline during his terms in office is a factor in the accusations, called President Donald Trump and other Republicans "liars" for making those claims.
"I consciously made all those decisions," Biden told the Times. "I made every decision; we're talking about a whole lot of people."
The pardon for his son Hunter Biden was the only clemency warrant that Biden "signed with his own hand," the Times reported.
The Times report concluded that Biden didn't individually approve the names, and that the autopen-authorized actions were made by staffers based on standards that Biden had approved.
House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., suggested Biden's doctor's pleading the Fifth Amendment last week at a House Oversight Committee hearing calls into question Biden's autopen presidential actions.
In the 25 pardon and commutation warrants from last December to January, according to the Times, Biden reduced sentences for 4,000 federal convicts and preemptively pardoned dozens, all but one via autopen.
The records in the National Archives can be investigated to garner the details of what Biden might have done with them by searching keywords "clemency," "pardon," and "commutation," sources told the Times.
But Republicans have long assessed and alleged that the cognitively declined and cancer-stricken Biden was a "puppet" president for those "running the country" for him. Trump White House spokesman Harrison Fields said Biden's statements "should not be trusted."
"The truth will come out about who was, in fact, running the country," Fields told the Times.
Biden said he had to act to save his officials from Trump investigations.
"Everybody knows how vindictive he [Trump] is, so we knew that they'd do what they're doing now," Biden told the Times, pointing to his preemptive pardon for former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley.
"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? I told them I wanted to make sure he had a pardon because I knew exactly what Trump would do — without any merit, I might add."
One Biden White House counsel email from Ed Siskel covers Biden's impending flood of late-term pardons and commutations.
"The president makes the final decision on the final pardon and/or commutation slate," the Oct. 30, 2024, email reviewed by the Times read.
On one final night in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House residence, Biden kept his aides in a meeting until nearly 10 p.m., sources told the Times, and a Siskel aide emailed a draft summary of Biden's decision to an assistant to then-White House chief of staff Jeff Zients at 10:03 p.m. ET and copying others on the final version at 10:28 p.m. ET.
"I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons," Zients wrote three minutes later in a "reply all" to that latter email, the Times reported.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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