Fresh off the heels of former White House physician Kevin O’Connor refusing to cooperate and invoking the Fifth Amendment during a closed-door meeting with the House Oversight Committee about former President Joe Biden’s health, the ex-commander in chief addressed his administration’s controversial use of the autopen – particularly as it related to pardons at the end of his presidency – in a new interview with The New York Times.
The 82 year old gave The Gray Lady a 10-minute interview in which he confirmed that the only pardon he physically signed was the one for his son Hunter Biden. All the rest were validated using the autopen.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Michael Shellenberger, founder of Public on Substack, to discuss the latest revelations about how the Biden White House was operating and why it could signal “top to bottom” corruption.
The Times Report
As the Trump administration probes whether the Biden administration granted pardons and clemencies without the president’s authorization, The New York Times published a lengthy report on Sunday in which the former commander in chief attempted to push back on the allegations.
Biden granted the Times a brief, 10-minute conversation (which the partial transcript reveals was filled with plenty of “you know” and “anyway”) and claimed he personally made every clemency and pardon decision during the last few weeks of his presidency – even though he wasn’t the one who actually signed them.
“I made every decision,” Biden said, blaming the sheer volume of actions for why he couldn’t lend his actual signature to the documents. “We’re talking about a whole lot of people.”
But the level of Biden’s involvement does not appear to be as straightforward as he made it sound. Apparently he would “orally” approve the pardons and commutations, and then staff would send a written “blurb” to Staff Secretary Stefanie Feldman to autopen it into existence.
For some of the “categorical” pardons, the president approved the criteria but not the individuals themselves and the actual list of beneficiaries changed after Biden had seen earlier versions of the list.
Feldman apparently expressed some concern over the process because she was not present for the meetings in which the verbal sign-offs were given. “The girl who had to press go said, ‘Can I have something in writing?’ And all she got was, like, a reply-all from the chief of staff [Jeff Zients] saying, ‘Everything’s approved,'” Megyn noted. “That is how we wound up with some of the most controversial pardons in U.S. history.”
The Pardons and Clemencies
Back in December, Biden dropped the bombshell that he would be pardoning his son despite previous pledges not to do so. The action spared the former first son from a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions and also any additional prosecution for misdeeds spanning from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024.
He also preemptively issued pardons to Dr. Anthony Fauci, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, lawmakers on the January 6 Committee (including former Rep. Liz Cheney), and his brother, sister, and sister-in-law. He defended the latter by telling the Times that he thought Trump would “go after me through my family.”
“I know how vindictive he is. I mean, everybody knows how vindictive he is,” Biden said. “So we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now. And my family didn’t do anything wrong… and all it would do is, if they, if he went after them, would be, is run up legal bills.”
Additionally, Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people on home confinement, pardoned nearly 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders, and pardoned 39 people who were convicted of nonviolent crimes.
That is apparently where the “categories” came into play. “Well, first of all, there’s categories. So, you know, they aren’t reading names off for the commutations for those who had been home confinements for, during the pandemic,” Biden told the Times. “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. We know how vindictive Trump is and I’ve no doubt they would have gone after Mark for no good reason… I told them I wanted to make sure he had a pardon.”
‘Tremendous Scandal’?
An unnamed aide called this use of the autopen “routine procedure,” but Shellenberger wasn’t so sure. “It is so crazy because if you are too debilitated to actually sign something, then how can you say that you were fully competent to actually make the decision,” he asked.
President Donald Trump struck a similar note on Monday when asked about the Times report. “I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing, I guarantee you,” Trump said in the Oval Office, adding that the use of the autopen for pardons is a “tremendous scandal.”
Shellenberger said that when you start peeling back that onion on who was pardoned and the background of the senior aides around Biden, it is “corrupt from top to bottom” and requires investigation. “Jeff Zients, the chief of staff who pardoned Fauci, was also the main social media censorship coordinator on COVID [as the COVID policy czar],” he noted. “Where does it go legally? I mean, who knows.”
Megyn said it is going to be interesting to see how it plays out. “If Biden was non-compos mentis, the Hunter [pardon] could be in trouble and really all the autopen pardons,” she said. “You would have to put money on them standing [because] I don’t think the Supreme Court is going to want to second-guess any of this.”
“But… it is one of the reasons why we need this Dr. Kevin O’Connor to actually speak, notwithstanding his BS assertions of privilege,” Megyn added. “[Those] don’t stand when you are looking at a congressional subpoena… and we’ll see about the Fifth Amendment. If he gets immunity, that too should go away.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Shellenberger by tuning in to episode 1,107 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.