Jeff Mordock & Kerry Picket | August 29, 2025
(The Washington Times) — Vice President J.D. Vance on Thursday questioned the validity of pardons allegedly signed with an autopen during the Biden administration.
“I think that there’s something weird about this autopen, which is that you have a guy who even some of his own staff members said did not have the mental faculty to be president of the United States,” Mr. Vance said to a crowd of workers at a steel mill he was touring.
“While at the same time, he allegedly signed a bunch of pardons, which we now know were signed by the autopen. I think it raises a very difficult question about whether those pardons were actually legitimate in the first place.”
A top Justice Department official warned the Biden administration that thousands of last-minute pardons signed by autopen were legally flawed and went against President Biden’s intentions by granting clemency to violent offenders who killed children and police officers.
Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer criticized “highly problematic” language used in a single warrant, signed by the autopen, that pardoned hundreds of criminals in the final days of the Biden administration, according to a Jan. 18 email reviewed by The Washington Times.
The Justice Department released the Weinsheimer email to the legal watchdog group Oversight Project amid the Trump administration’s investigation of the Biden White House’s heavy use of the autopen.
Mr. Weinsheimer, writing to top Biden administration attorneys two days before Mr. Biden left office, said the wording of the pardoned offenses was too vague and could render the commutations ineffective. The lack of specificity could also result in commutations “in circumstances, including for crimes of violence, that was not intended,” he said.
He also noted that the Justice Department was blocked from playing any role in vetting the candidates for clemency. He said the White House granted some pardons despite “voluminous objections” from the victims’ families.
