House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is skeptical about Joe Biden’s assertion published this weekend that, as president, he “made every single” decision on clemency for more than 2,500 individuals.
In a New York Times interview, the 46th president defended the clemency decisions that included preemptive pardons of family members as well as controversial government officials such as former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr. Anthony Fauci and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.
But the Times also noted that Biden didn’t approve each individual name for clemency, but rather he approved “categories” that his staff mentioned. This comes amid questions of how the autopen was used at the White House during the Biden presidency and whether he was aware of all presidential actions taken in his name.
“New reporting confirms Biden White House staff took executive action without the president’s approval,” Comer, the Kentucky Republican, told The Daily Signal in a statement.
“The House Oversight Committee will continue pursuing answers about this historic scandal to prevent such an abuse from happening again,” Comer continued.
The House is investigating the potential coverup of Biden’s apparent mental decline while in the White House. Additionally, President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate the use of the autopen during Biden’s presidency as well as whether Biden was aware of presidential actions when the autopen was used.
In the Times interview, Biden said his staff didn’t read the name of every person he pardoned but only gave him “categories” to approve.
“Well, first of all, there’s categories. So, you know, they aren’t reading names off for the commutations for those who had been [on] home confinement for, during the pandemic,” Biden said.
“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,” Biden continued. “We know how vindictive Trump is, and I’ve no doubt they would have gone after Mark for no good reason. The general, you know. So, they may read off his name—what’d I want?”
“And you know, you know, members of the Jan. 6 committee—it’s just, there were no—I was deeply involved,” he said, speaking of preemptively pardoning the members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol who investigated Trump and his administration after the Capitol Hill protests of Jan. 6, 2021.
Biden said, “I laid out a strategy how I want to go about these, dealing with pardons and commutations. I was—and I pulled the team in to say this is how I want to get it done generically and then specifically.”
The former president also said regarding clemency decisions, “I made every single one of those. And including the categories, when we set this up to begin with.”
He also defended the use of the autopen.
“The autopen is, you know, is legal. As you know, other presidents used it, including Trump. But the point is that, you know, we’re talking about a whole lot of people,” Biden told the Times.
