‘It’s Madness!’: Mark Halperin Slams NYT For Leaving Out Key Voices In Biden Autopen Story

Political analyst Mark Halperin criticized The New York Times on Monday for omitting Republican voices and legal experts from its Sunday article on former President Joe Biden’s use of an autopen to issue clemency.

Biden told the NYT that he had directed his staff to use the autopen on clemency warrants because he granted them to “a whole lot of people,” but asserted he approved all of the pardons and commutations at the end of his term. Halperin said on “The Morning Meeting” that the NYT violated fundamental journalism tenets and would not have done so had it been a Republican rather than Biden.

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“I thought Joe Biden was pretty good in the interview, but if the shoe were on the other foot, I can’t believe The New York Times wouldn’t have gone and gotten Adam Schiff’s reaction,” Halperin said. “There’s no Republican reaction in that story. There’s no legal expert quoted in the story.”

“It’s like, that’s basic Journalism 101. Biden is now taking the position that he could delegate pardons, right? That’s the position they took in the story. Everything else is fine. That’s the one thing. So, what do law professors think about that? What do Republicans think about that? It’s absent from the story,” he added. “I don’t understand that as a matter of journalism. And I guarantee you if it were a Republican, they’d have both those things. They’d have some hysterical law professor saying this is an impeachable offense. And they’d have a Republican saying this needs to be investigated … It’s madness!”