Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley on Tuesday demanded that former President Joe Biden’s staff secretary Stefanie Feldman testify before Congress on her use of the autopen during his term.
The New York Times published a Sunday article on Biden’s use of an autopen to issue clemency, reporting that Feldman was the person who “managed use of the autopen.” Hawley said on “Bannon’s War Room” that he expected Feldman’s testimony would show that Biden did not approve any of the clemency he issued, asserting that if he was correct, it “would be like the scandal of the century.”
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“[F]irst of all, we need to call the person. We now have the name of the person who managed the autopen under Biden … She needs to be called before Congress, put under oath, testify in public,” Hawley told host Steve Bannon. “We need to hear from her. We need to know exactly what did he authorize? When did he authorize it? I suspect the truth is, Steve, he didn’t authorize anything, which would be like the scandal of the century. We need to know that.”
“Number two, there is supposed to be a paper trail. We had a hearing on this in the Senate a couple of weeks ago. To me, the big revelation out of that hearing was, every time the autopen is used, there’s supposed to be an explicit paper trail,” he continued. “The president has to, at a minimum, give verbal consent to use it — and a record is made of that. So let’s get all the documents. Let’s see them. They should be in Biden’s archives. They ought to be in his papers. We need to go get them, if Biden’s not going to release them voluntarily. Congress ought to subpoena those documents and get them and put them out in public.”
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 claimed he approved every pardon and commutation at the end of his presidency.
He also addressed the pardons he gave to his family and prominent individuals such as Gen. Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci. He told the NYT that he talked about every “high-profile pardon” personally with his staff.
“Everybody knows how vindictive he is, so we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now,” Biden told the NYT, asserting he wanted to protect pardon recipients from significant legal costs fighting potential cases from President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice.
“I consciously made all those decisions,” Biden added.
The sole pardon Biden signed using his own hand from December 2024 to January 2025 was for his son Hunter. He issued 25 pardons and commutations using the autopen during that same time frame.
Emails reviewed by the NYT showed that Biden’s staff had a process to ensure that he gave verbal approval for autopen usage. When Biden granted a wide array of clemency and pardons toward the end of his term, he did not personally approve each person but did approve the guidelines for them, according to the NYT, citing reviewed emails.
Political analyst Mark Halperin criticized the NYT on “The Morning Meeting” Monday for omitting Republican voices and legal experts from its article.
“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,” Halperin said. “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 absent from the story. It’s madness!”
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