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Former President Joe Biden defended his use of an autopen during a recent interview, shedding light on his administration’s rationale for the controversial use of the technology.
The interview with the New York Times was centered around his use of an autopen during the last pardons that he made during the end of his administration.
In his final weeks in office, Biden granted clemency and pardoned more than 1,500 individuals, in what the White House described at the time as the largest single-day act of clemency by a U.S. president.
Speaking to the Times on Thursday, Biden said that he “made every decision” on his own.
HERE ARE BIDEN’S MOST CONTROVERSIAL PARDONS, WITH MOST SIGNED USING AUTOPEN
In his final weeks in office, President Joe Biden granted clemency and pardoned more than 1,500 individuals. (Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“We’re talking about [granting clemency to] a whole lot of people,” the Democrat said.
However, the Times reported that Biden “did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people,” according to the former president and his aides.
“Rather, after extensive discussion of different possible criteria, [Biden] signed off on the standards he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction in sentence,” the Times’s report read.
Instead of repeatedly asking the president to resign updated versions of official documents, his staff used an autopen to put Biden’s signature on the final version.
Biden’s comments came as Republicans attacked him for his autopen use on a massive number of official documents.
In June, President Donald Trump sent a memo to the Department of Justice directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the autopen use, and to determine whether it was related to a decline in Biden’s mental state.
U.S. President Joe Biden yells out to the press while departing the 102nd National…
