‘They could not know if they were doing so at the President’s direction’: Cruz offers to help AG Bondi investigate Biden’s clemency ‘abuse’

Senator Ted Cruz has written a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi offering to help investigate what he calls the Biden administration’s abuse of presidential clemency power through the use of an autopen. The Texas Republican says the former president and his officials broke constitutional rules for pardons by using the automatic signing device.

In the final months of his presidency, Biden granted clemency to more than 4,200 people. This included roughly 1,500 inmates in December and 2,500 more commutations in January, which was the most ever by a president in a single day. Many of these pardons were signed using an autopen rather than Biden’s own hand, raising questions about whether presidents can legally use such devices.

According to Fox News, Cruz argues that the presidential pardon power under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution requires a clear chain from the president to the pardon being granted. “They could not know if they were doing so at the President’s direction, either on a case-by-case basis or as a matter of criteria,” Cruz said about officials responsible for signing pardons. He claims the Biden White House set up a process that separated the president from those signing pardons on his behalf.

Internal emails reveal concerns about autopen use

Recent reports from Axios have shown that high-ranking Biden administration officials raised concerns about how the president’s team handled pardons and used the autopen. Internal emails reveal that after Biden pardoned his son Hunter in December 2024, there was what one source called “a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon.”

Staff Secretary Stef Feldman repeatedly asked for proof that Biden had approved the use of the autopen for various documents. In one January 7 email about using the autopen for an executive order, she wrote: “When did we get Biden’s approval of this?” Biden’s family members, including his brother James and sister Valerie, received pardons that were also signed using the autopen on his final day in office.

The controversy has grown after Justice Department officials raised objections about the clemency process. Senior ethics attorney Bradley Weinsheimer wrote that calling all clemency recipients “nonviolent” was “untrue, or at least misleading.” He noted that some recipients had violent crime records, including one man who had pleaded guilty to charges related to murdering a woman and her two-year-old daughter. 

While Biden has denied any wrongdoing in his use of the autopen, saying it is a legal practice that other presidents have used, Trump has ordered an investigation into whether Biden’s aides used the autopen to hide his cognitive decline during his final months in office.