Biden's woes converge: Last-minute pardons under fire, calls for prosecution mount following Hur tape release
The release of audio recordings of former President Joe Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Hur have intensified criticism of the administration's use of an autopen on official presidential orders and pardons.
The damning tapes, which bring Biden's alarming mental decline into sharp relief, were kept under wraps by Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland. Now that Biden's cognitive problems have been bared, some are calling for Garland to face prosecution for rejecting Congressional demands to release the tapes when he ran the Department of Justice (DOJ).
"Key decisions made in the final days of the Biden presidency, including using autopens to issue blanket pardons for the Biden Crime Family, must be fully examined. There are serious concerns that President Biden lacked the mental capacity to authorize those actions," House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., posted to X on Saturday.
Axios released hours of Biden's interview with the special counsel's office on Saturday – a year and a half after the interviews were held across a two-day period in the fall of 2023. The recordings showed the former president tripping over his words, slurring sentences, taking long pauses between answers and struggling to remember key moments in his life, including the year his son Beau Biden died of cancer.
The recordings have further bolstered conservative outrage stretching back years that Biden's mental acuity had cratered and that the Delaware Democrat who had served in the Senate for decades had become a "shadow" of himself and was unfit to lead the country as president.
The flurry of pardons Biden allegedly signed by autopen in the waning days of his administration included ones for his son Hunter Biden, his siblings and their spouses, retired Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members and staff of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview on Sunday that he has long sounded the alarm over the validity of Biden's pardons, as many lacked specifically what charges an individual was protected against. Instead, many of the pardons outlined blanket protections, such as preemptively pardoning Milley and Fauci from potential prosecution and blanket pardons for unidentified members of Congress who served on the J6 select committee.
"I've been long of the position that the pardons, many of the pardons, are not valid based on the fact that they don't pardon anything. It's just a pardon for conduct that's unnamed … it's further confirmation that the pardons are not valid," said Fitton, who had sued for the release of the audio recordings.
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"A competent president would say, ‘How is it I could pardon someone for nothing?’" he continued.
Fitton added that "more importantly, Biden should still be prosecuted" after he was "mollycoddled" by the Biden DOJ during the investigation into the documents he possessed from his days in the Senate and when he served as vice president.
"The audio shows he was mollycoddled by the Justice Department, you know, because Hur was working for the Justice Department. … There's an argument that the records he had as vice president, he could have. But that wasn't the position of Justice Department. But certainly he didn't have the right to have those records from his days of the Senate," Fitton said.
President Donald Trump railed on Truth Social that the release of the audio recordings revealed a "bigger scandal" about the use of an autopen under the Biden White House.
"Whoever had control of the "AUTOPEN" is looking to be a bigger and bigger scandal by the moment," Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday.
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He added: "THIS IS WHY THE UNSELECT COMMITTEE OF POLITICAL THUGS, WHO WERE GIVEN A FULL AND COMPLETE PARDON BY THE PERSON WHO WIELDED THE NOW ILLEGALLY USED AUTOPEN, DELETED AND DESTROYED ALL EVIDENCE AND INFORMATION FROM THEIR CORRUPT AND VICIOUS WITCH HUNT AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHER PEOPLE, WHOSE LIVES WERE COMPLETELY SHATTERED AND DESTROYED BY THIS HISTORICALLY CRIMINAL EVENT."
Autopen signatures are automatically produced by a machine, as opposed to an authentic, handwritten signature. The conservative Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project first investigated the Biden administration's use of an autopen earlier this year and found that the same signature was on a bevvy of executive orders and other official documents, while Biden’s signature on the document announcing his departure from the 2024 race varied from the apparent machine-produced signature.
The reports led to speculation that Biden aides had approved of executive orders and sweeping pardons, not the president.
Hur led an investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents following his departure as vice president under the Obama administration. Hur announced in February 2024 that he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, citing that Biden is "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
Although a transcript was released, the White House asserted executive privilege over releasing recordings after Garland urged the administration not to release the recordings, according to a letter obtained by Fox News in May of last year.
"The audio recordings of your interview and Mr. Zwonitzer's interview fall within the scope of executive privilege. Production of these recordings to the Committees would raise an unacceptable risk of undermining the Department's ability to conduct similar high-profile criminal investigations--in particular, investigations where the voluntary cooperation of White House officials is exceedingly important," Garland wrote in a letter to Biden last year, justifying why the recordings should not be released.
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Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-OH, subpoenaed the Department of Justice in February 2024 for the recordings and other materials related to the interview and investigation, but to no avail. The House voted to hold Garland in contempt of Congress over the matter in June 2024.
Comer announced on Friday that his committee will continue "its investigation into the cover-up of Biden’s mental decline and use of autopen" and the use of the pen when Biden pardoned members of his family.
"The American people deserve to know who was actually calling the shots in the Biden White House, because it wasn’t Joe Biden. His mental decline was obvious to anyone paying attention. But instead of being honest, the Biden Administration, Democrats in Congress, and the legacy media lied and covered it up. They gaslit the American people while propping up a man who was unfit to lead," Comer said in a press release on Friday, noting that Garland "defied" a subpoena to release the recordings.
"Key decisions made in the final days of the Biden presidency, including using autopens to issue blanket pardons for the Biden Crime Family, must be fully examined. There are serious concerns that President Biden lacked the mental capacity to authorize those actions. The American people are done being lied to. We’re going to bring the truth into the light, and starting next week, those involved in the cover-up will begin to be put on notice," Comer said in a statement on Friday.
The recordings "demonstrate that Biden was completely out of it, and we already found documents that the Biden White House had changed the transcript, edited it to hide this. This is what they were hiding. There's got to be accountability. Garland should be prosecuted by the Attorney General over the contempt he had for Congress to hide this," Fitton said on Fox News last week.
Fox News host Mark Levin said Garland "should be forced to testify before Congress under oath" over the alleged cover-up of Biden's health.
"Former Attorney General Garland heard these recordings and used lies and deceit to prevent them from being released to the American people before the Democrats nominated Biden. He should be forced to testify before Congress under oath and held to account for his grotesque abuse of power," Levin posted to X.
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Hours before Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, the White House announced pardons for both Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Less than a half an hour before Trump became president, Biden pardoned members of his family, including his brother James B. Biden, sister Valerie Biden Owens, brother-in-law John T. Owens and brother Francis W. Biden.
The former president had previously issued a "full and unconditional pardon" to his adult son, Hunter Biden, after he was convicted in two separate federal cases last year. Hunter Biden's pardon covered a 10-year period, between 2014 to 2024, for any offenses he may have committed.
"I do think that the Biden pardons need some scrutiny, and they need scrutiny because we want pardons to matter and to be accepted and to be something that's used correctly. So, I do think we're going to take a hard look at how they went and what they did. And if they're null and void," Ed Martin said in his final press conference while serving as acting U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.
Trump claimed on Truth Social in March that Biden's pardons were "void" due to the "fact that they were done by Autopen."
"The 'Pardons' that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen," Trump claimed in a Truth Social post.
"In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime," Trump added.
BIDEN STRUGGLES WITH WORDS, KEY MEMORIES IN LEAKED AUDIO FROM SPECIAL COUNSEL HUR INTERVIEW
Martin, who will now lead the Department of Justice's "Weaponization Working Group" targeting political corruption within the federal law enforcement department, added in a media interview earlier this month that he had been investigating Biden's last-minute pardons.
"When [former President] Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, and it turned out that Marc Rich had paid a boatload of money to one of Clinton’s friend’s lawyers. That’s not corrupt, it’s not criminal, because the plenary power of the pardon. But in the case of Joe Biden and his pardons, they were so specific. Back 14 years, covering everything you’ve ever done. And when I say specific, they were broad, but they had time stuff on them," Martin said earlier this month, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
"And that at least leads to questions, because the plenary power’s true. But the question is what is going on here, and I did get responses from some of them and those questions are ongoing," Martin continued.
Conservative social media users have sounded off that the recordings show Biden lacked the cognitive ability to know about the pardons or executive orders he allegedly signed off on.
"Joe Biden had no clue where he was for most of his presidency... Just listen to Robert Hur's interview with him... He's a complete mess. There's no way Biden knew about the pardons, executive orders and directives coming out of his office," conservative X commentator Tim Young posted to the platform.
"I'd say with the Hur tapes coming out, maybe those pardons can be challenged? Biden was CLEARLY mentally incapacitated," conservative podcast host Shawn Farash posted to X.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Biden's office for comment on the tapes and subsequent backlash on Sunday morning but did not immediately receive a reply.