Biden Defends Use Of Autopen For Mass Clemency Decisions

Former President Joe Biden defended his decision to use an autopen for signing his final pardons, explaining the administration’s rationale for employing the device in a recently published interview

.The conversation with The New York Times focused specifically on his use of the autopen to execute the last round of clemency measures at the close of his term

In those final weeks, Biden granted pardons and clemency to over 1,500 individuals, what the White House described at the time as the largest single-day act of clemency by any U.S. president.

In his interview, Biden told the Times he “made every decision” on his own. “We’re talking about [granting clemency to] a whole lot of people,” Biden told the paper.

But that said, the Times reported that the then-president “did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people,” according to Biden himself 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 said.

Rather than repeatedly requesting that the president sign updated versions of official documents, his staff employed an autopen to affix Biden’s signature to the final drafts.

His explanation came amid Republican criticism of his extensive use of the autopen on a large volume of formal paperwork