Overview

• House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer reported that depositions to date have produced no evidence showing Biden personally knew who operated the autopen or reviewed each clemency warrant.
• White House aides, including physician Kevin O’Connor and former staffer Anthony Bernal, invoked the Fifth Amendment in recent depositions, deepening scrutiny of the internal pardon process.
• In a New York Times interview, Biden said he established the clemency criteria and made all final decisions, even as his staff used the autopen to apply his signature en masse.
• A 2003 Office of Legal Counsel memo holds that autopen signatures carry the same legal force as handwritten ones, but their deployment for large-scale pardons represents an unprecedented application.
• Critics argue that mechanized signing undercuts presidential accountability in high-profile clemency actions, while supporters maintain it reflects a routine delegation tool within executive operations.