The Joe Biden autopen scandal just got a whole lot worse.
For months, we’ve known that his team used the autopen to rubber-stamp thousands of pardons and commutations in the final days of his presidency, but now we’re learning that the Justice Department’s own senior lawyers raised red flags just two days before Biden left office. The revelations confirm what many suspected all along: the sweeping clemency orders weren’t just sloppy, they were potentially unlawful.
🚨Biden’s Own DOJ Threw Red Flag on Autopenned Pardons 🚨
NEW DOCS FROM @EagleEdMartin show Biden’s own DOJ warned against autopenned clemency awards.@realdonaldtrump should refuse to release inmates that received this illegal clemency and re-arrest those already released. pic.twitter.com/pPCYz8UD3f
— Oversight Project (@ItsYourGov) August 19, 2025
An internal email that Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer sent on Jan. 18, 2025, expressed alarm over the scope and vagueness of the mass pardons. He warned that the language in one of the warrants was “highly problematic” because it lacked clarity and may have unintentionally allowed dangerous criminals to walk free. He also stated flatly that the DOJ, the very agency tasked with reviewing clemency applications, had been cut out of the loop entirely.
That’s not how the system is supposed to work.
Presidents have the constitutional power to issue pardons, but history shows there’s usually a vetting process to prevent abuses and to protect public safety. Biden’s team threw that out the window.
Weinsheimer specifically cautioned that the blanket wording could make some of the commutations ineffective, or worse, extend clemency to violent crimes that weren’t supposed to fall under Biden’s stated standards. The White House, meanwhile, ignored victims’ families who pleaded against releasing certain offenders. Instead, they shoved through three massive autopen-signed warrants covering thousands of cases without so much as a second thought.
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The fallout from this arrogance is already evident. Among those pardoned was Russell McIntosh, a convicted murderer who killed a woman and her toddler after she threatened to expose his drug empire. Biden’s mass commutation set him free. This is not a “non-violent drug offender,” which is how Biden publicly described the criteria for his mass pardons. Families of victims now have to live with the knowledge that the man responsible for their loved ones’ deaths is free because Biden’s staff decided to turn clemency into an assembly-line process, blessed by a machine’s pen stroke.
The Oversight Project, a watchdog group, obtained the Weinsheimer email through the Trump administration’s investigation into the autopen pardons. It marks the first official confirmation that top DOJ attorneys questioned not only the scale and legality of the orders, but the fact that Biden himself appeared absent from the process. Their point is simple: if prosecutors at DOJ can’t figure out who these pardons cover, did Biden even know what he was signing? And if he didn’t, who did?
According to the Oversight Project’s Mike Howell, the very confusion over the scope of these pardons proves that Biden wasn’t calling the shots.
Howell argues that staffers, guided by pressure from activist groups, assembled the list while Biden merely nodded from the sidelines, possibly not even fully aware of the details. That’s why they’re pushing the Justice Department to rule the pardons invalid, prevent further releases, and hand over records explaining how the White House drew up the list.
Biden, of course, claims that he was in charge. He told The New York Times that he set the standards, authorized the use of autopen, and approved a framework that supposedly prioritized “non-violent drug offenders.” But here’s the problem: The internal DOJ email proves the final package included violent criminals: murderers, kidnappers, and rapists. In other words, Biden’s public line was contradicted by the reality of what his own signature machine unleashed.
The broader issue here isn’t just whether the autopen itself is constitutional. It’s whether an 82-year-old president, suffering from an obvious cognitive decline, outsourced one of the most serious powers of his office to staffers, activists, and ultimately, a piece of machinery. Weinsheimer tried to warn the administration that its approach was reckless and legally flawed.
It ignored him.
Now thousands of offenders, including violent criminals, are out because of Biden’s negligence. This is a dereliction of duty. And the more we learn about Biden’s final days in office, the clearer it becomes that he wasn’t running the country. The machine was.
The Biden autopen scandal reveals a deadly recklessness that threatens justice and public safety. PJ Media exposes what the mainstream media refuses to report: how thousands of pardons released violent criminals at the expense of victims. Join PJ Media VIP with the code FIGHT for 60% off and get exclusive, fearless reporting. Don’t wait, join today!
