President Donald Trump announced that the Biden administrationâs use of the autopen is under investigation.
During a meeting at the White House, a reporter asked Trump about Venezuela and the threat of terrorism posed by President NicolĂĄs Maduro. Trump spoke about his administrationâs efforts to combat the threat, which led to him slamming President Joe Bidenâs incompetence.
âYou talk about Argentina being important in Latin America. What is your plan for Venezuela? What is the new terrorism, the narco-terrorism against President Maduro? What is your plan about it?â a reporter asked Trump.
âVenezuela has done a couple of things very badly. Number one, we get drugs and all of that. But we get something, in a way, worse. Because theyâre a big purveyor of drugs. But we have worse. What they do very well is they send their criminals into the United States. And they send Tren de Aragua, that you know very well. Youâre from Venezuela, I assume. And they send them in by the thousands, literally. And these are the worst of all. They empty their prisons into the United States. They empty their mental institutions into the United States,â Trump said.
âAnd because we had a president whoâs low IQ, he didnât realize what was going on. And the people that are high IQ that surround him, but they happen to be lunatics, radical left, theyâre highly intelligent, radical left lunatics. So, in a way, thatâs worse than having a guy like Biden,â Trump added.
âBut they ran the show. You heard about the Autopen. The person that really operated the Autopen. But it was really the people that told the person that operated the Autopen what to do. Those are the people that really were president. So, weâre not going to stand for it in this country,â the president argued.
âAnd, by the way, that Autopen thing is under serious investigation. I donât think you care because youâre from Washington. You couldnât care less about that,â Trump continued.
Trump concluded, âBut I just want to say, because I do The Weave, you know. The Weave covers a lot of different subjects. But the people that are involved in that Autopen scam, because he barely signed anything. I mean, this guy, I donât know how he can be president. He barely signed it. But the only thing we can find for sure is that he signed Hunterâs Biden. His pardon. Hunterâs Biden. I like that. Thatâs a good combination.â
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Internal White House emails reveal concern among aides and Justice Department officials about former President Joe Bidenâs sweeping clemency grants in his final days in office, including uncertainty over whether Biden personally reviewed or approved the specific documents authorizing thousands of pardons and commutations.
The messages show that Biden orally approved a plan on Jan. 11, 2025, to commute sentences for inmates serving time on crack cocaine charges. But three warrant documents listing roughly 2,500 recipients were not signed â by autopen â until the morning of Jan. 17, just three days before he left office.
On the evening of Jan. 16, then-White House Staff Secretary Stef Feldman told colleagues she needed confirmation that Biden had consented before she would authorize his autopen signature.
âIâm going to need email ⊠confirming P[resident] signs off on the specific documents when they are ready,â Feldman wrote at 9:16 p.m.
Deputy White House counsel Tyeesha Dixon forwarded Feldmanâs message to Michael Posada, chief of staff to the counselâs office.
âMichael, thoughts on how to handle this? He doesnât review the warrants,â she wrote.
Posada responded: âWe will just need something ⊠making clear that the documents accurately reflect his decision.â
The mass clemency was announced hours later, at 4:59 a.m. on Jan. 17.
It remains unclear whether Biden personally reviewed the final warrant documents before autopen signatures were affixed.
In public comments to the New York Times in July, Biden acknowledged the use of autopen, saying it was necessary âbecause there were a lot of them.â
Legal experts note that the autopen carries full legal effect, but the warrants must reflect the presidentâs actual decisions. Emails show aides attempted to create a record verifying his intent.
