Former President Joe Biden’s chief of staff issued final approval for multiple high-profile preemptive pardons during Biden’s final days in office, according to a new report.
Biden’s alleged use of the autopen has become a sticking point for months, as President Donald Trump has said thousands of pardons Biden signed were void and claimed that the former president did not know what documents he was signing through the automated device.
Biden issued a series of preemptive pardons on his final day to officials, including former chief medical advisor to the president Anthony Fauci and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, in an attempt to safeguard them from retribution from Trump.
In an article intended to be his defense for the autopen issue, it emerged that, although Biden reportedly made the decision in a meeting, Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients is the one who gave final approval for the use of the autopen, at least in the case of Fauci and Milley, the New York Times reported.
On Biden’s final day as president, Jan. 19, Biden had a meeting with his aides until nearly 10 p.m. to talk about various preemptive pardons, the Times reports. Emails obtained by the Times show that an aide sent a summary draft of the decisions formalized during that meeting to Zient’s assistant at 10:03 p.m.
The assistant sent the email to Zients and others present in the meeting, requesting approval from Zients and White House deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed at 10:28 p.m., the Times reported. Zients replied all to the email three minutes later, the outlet said.
‘I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons,’ Zients said in the email, according to the Times.
Zients could not be immediately reached for comment by Fox News Digital.
Additionally, the Times report said Biden did not personally approve each name included in the broad, categorical pardons.
‘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 reported.
When asked about the Times’ report, Trump told reporters at the White House Monday that Biden’s alleged use of the autopen amounted to possibly ‘one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50 to 100 years.’
‘I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing, I guarantee you,’ Trump said.
Additionally, the White House said the report shed light on Biden’s trustworthiness, and accused the Biden administration of engaging in a cover-up.
‘The same president who lied through his teeth to the American people for four years about everything from his health to the state of the economy should not be trusted again,’ White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in an email to Fox News. ‘The Biden administration conducted the most egregious cover-up scheme in American politics… The truth will come out about who was, in fact, running the country sooner or later, just as the truth is emerging about the state of Joe Biden’s cognitive and physical health.’
Biden granted a total of 4,245 acts of clemency during his administration, 96% of which were granted during his final months in office between October 2024 and January, according to the Pew Research Center.
Trump first accused Biden of using an autopen to sign important clemency documents in March. He has continued to bring up the issue, and sent a memo ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to launch an investigation into Biden’s autopen use in June, and to probe if the usage stemmed from a decline in Biden’s mental acuity.
‘In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that Biden’s aides abused the power of presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority,’ Trump wrote in the memo.
‘This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history. The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.’
A White House official previously told Fox News Digital that Trump uses his hand signature for every legally operational or binding document. Even so, Trump has admitted that he uses an autopen for letters.
An autopen is a machine that physically holds a pen and features programming to imitate a person’s signature. Unlike a stamp or a digitized print of a signature, the autopen has the capability to hold various types of pens like a ballpoint to a permanent marker, according to descriptions of autopen machines available for purchase.
Fox News’ Andrea Margolis and Pat Ward contributed to this report.