{"id":149406,"date":"2025-09-05T18:40:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T23:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldtribune.com\/?p=149406"},"modified":"2025-09-05T18:40:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T23:40:22","slug":"report-memos-show-biden-outsourced-approval-of-pardons-to-harris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/report-memos-show-biden-outsourced-approval-of-pardons-to-harris\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Memos show Biden outsourced approval of pardons to Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"

by<\/em><\/span> WorldTribune<\/strong> Staff<\/em><\/span><\/span>, September 5, 2025 <\/em>Real World News<\/span><\/a>
\n<\/em><\/span>
\nJoe Biden ignored the pleas of his aides to personally sign official presidential actions and would later outsource decisions on pardons to Kamala Harris, a report said.<\/p>\n

Those clemency decisions included pre-emptive pardons for Biden family members as well as commutations for federal death row sentences, according to internal memos.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cThe memos were gathered as part of a sweeping review by the Trump White House into Biden’s use of autopen signatures for official business, an inquiry that now raises new questions about whether the former president actually attended four meetings late in his term dedicated to making clemency decisions,\u201d Just the News reported<\/span><\/a> on September 5.<\/p>\n

An early memo from the Biden White House shows a day one administration policy to use an \u201coriginal hand signature\u201d for pardons had been abandoned by Biden\u2019s final year in office, when the autopen was frequently used to sign orders as part of the Biden team\u2019s clemency spree which included preemptive pardons for such figures as Antony Fauci and Adam Schiff.<\/p>\n

White House Staff Secretary Jess Hertz\u2019s February 2021 draft memo states unequivocally that senior staff would recommend Biden personally sign \u201cpardon letters\u201d with an \u201coriginal hand signature,\u201d according to a copy of the document provided to Just the News.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on precedent from the Obama-Biden Administration regarding which documents generally are hand-signed by the President, our recommendation is that as a general rule, YOU personally approve and hand-sign all decisions that require Presidential action,\u201d the memo states.<\/p>\n

(The internal memos can be viewed here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.)<\/p>\n

The Just the News report noted: \u201cBy the final year of Biden\u2019s term, a lack of briefing records and contemporaneous meeting notes raises questions about whether Biden was being sufficiently briefed on the decisions in front of him, and whether he was ultimately making the decisions at all, the White House concluded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden insisted in June of this year: \u201cI made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn\u2019t is ridiculous and false.”<\/p>\n

However, a draft memorandum circulated by Biden\u2019s own White House Counsel\u2019s office in February 2024 describing the \u201cgeneral pattern\u201d for obtaining approval for clemency actions appears to contradict Biden\u2019s assertion. The document shows that by the president\u2019s last year in office, he was increasingly relying on Harris’s assessment, rather than his own, in the approval process.<\/p>\n

\u201cNote: Given the President\u2019s schedule, it can often take days or weeks for the President to review and approve the clemency package,\u201d a Biden White Hosue lawyers\u2019 memo reads. \u201cThe Chief of Staff\u2019s office has been helpful in getting the paper in front of him for his review.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe previously asked the White House Counsel to discuss the candidates with him, although in the last round the Vice President\u2019s approval was sufficient to obtain his approval,\u201d the lawyers noted.<\/p>\n

The Trump White House concluded that this memo shows Biden was effectively \u201coutsourcing\u201d clemency decisions to Harris during that final year.<\/p>\n

Further, the Trump Administration\u2019s review found scant contemporaneous evidence that Biden had actually attended four key clemency meetings in the waning months of his term and turned up no record of Biden\u2019s briefing books addressing pardons, commutations, or clemency at that time.<\/p>\n

There were four meetings over December 2024 and January 2025 during which Biden was said to have given \u201cverbal approval\u201d for his wide-ranging clemency actions, including commutations for CARES Act home confinement recipients, federal death row inmates, and crack-powder sentencing disparities, as well as Biden family pardons.<\/p>\n

However, despite retroactive emails detailing Biden\u2019s presence at the four meetings \u2014 which allegedly took place on Dec. 5, December 11, Jan. 11, and Jan. 19 \u2014 the National Archives possessed no contemporaneous staff notes from any meeting attendees that could confirm that Biden was present at those meetings or gave verbal approval to those clemency acts.<\/p>\n

\n

Support<\/span> Free Press Foundation<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by WorldTribune Staff, September 5, 2025 Real World News Joe Biden ignored the pleas of his aides to personally sign official presidential actions and would later outsource decisions on pardons to Kamala Harris, a report said. Those clemency decisions included pre-emptive pardons for Biden family members as well as commutations for federal death row sentences, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":149407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,10,18,16],"tags":[634],"class_list":["post-149406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusives","category-rest-of-the-best","category-top-stories","category-top-story","category-u-s-politics","tag-report-memos-show-biden-outsourced-approval-of-pardons-to-harris","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}