New Emails Shed More Light on the Biden Autopen Fiasco. It Was Total Mayhem.

Matt Vespa | September 05, 2025 7:00 AM

The Joe Biden autopen fiasco isn’t over, and it never went away. It just went dormant for a bit, but we knew something was going to drop, and it has. President Joe Biden signed a trove of clemency petitions before he shuffled out of the White House. There are concerns that he wasn’t cogent or even aware of what he was signing. That issue presented itself with executive orders, as told by Speaker Mike Johnson. The mountain of clemency petitions was navigated by a shoddy chain of command among top Biden staffers, and again, it presented issues about whether Joe Biden was aware of what was going on—this latest trove of emails shows he probably didn’t (via NY Post):

BOMBSHELL

New emails obtained by NYP reveal Biden didn’t even review the list of clemency recipients that his autopen signed pic.twitter.com/exAHal0t2C
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 4, 2025

President Biden’s sweeping clemency grants during his final days in office caused concern inside the West Wing and Justice Department about how to ensure his wishes were accurately implemented — and it’s unclear whether Biden himself was consulted before thousands of pardons were announced, internal emails obtained exclusively by The Post show.
The messages indicate the 46th president orally approved commutations for inmates jailed for crack cocaine offenses on Jan. 11 — but his auto-penned signature wasn’t affixed to three documents listing about 2,500 recipients until the morning of Jan. 17.
The debate over who exactly to include in the mass pardons and how to modify their sentences came to a head late on the night of Jan. 16.
Then-White House Staff Secretary Stef Feldman, a key gatekeeper of the presidential autopen, wrote to West Wing lawyers she needed evidence Biden had consented before she authorized a mechanical signature on one of the most sweeping acts of clemency in American history.
“I’m going to need email from [Deputy Assistant to the President] Rosa [Po] on original chain confirming P[resident] signs off on the specific documents when they are ready,” Feldman wrote to five other Biden aides at 9:16 p.m.
Six minutes later, deputy White House counsel Tyeesha Dixon, one of the email recipients, forwarded the message to Michael Posada, chief of staff to the White House counsel’s office.
“Michael, thoughts on how to handle this?” Dixon asked, adding in reference to the documents authorizing clemency: “He doesn’t review the warrants.”