Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?

There are too many politicians in America today who think a man like Decarlos Brown belongs on the streets and not behind bars or in a padded cell.

Brown had been arrested more than a dozen times, and convicted of everything from shoplifting to armed robbery, before he plunged a knife into the neck of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a commuter train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

He could have been removed from society years before he murdered her.

Instead, authorities in North Carolina produced a travesty of justice that cost the life of a young woman who fled a war zone only to meet a senseless death in a place she thought safe.

Just months ago another travesty was taking place in the nation's capital as the Biden administration drew to a close.

On his way out the door, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of more than 4,000 federally incarcerated offenders.

Only it wasn't President Biden issuing the record-shattering number of commutations -- it was his autopen.

And who controlled that?

The autopen's last-minute pardons and commutations weren't approved by the Justice Department:

"There was a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon -- and then they largely didn't run it by the Justice Department to vet them," a source told the D.C. insider publication Axios.

While Biden claimed the last-minute blizzard of pardons and commutations was for "nonviolent" drug offenders, a trove of administration emails obtained by The Oversight Project and first reported on by the New York Post's Josh Christenson tell a different story.

"I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading," Associate Deputy Attorney General Brad Weinsheimer warned about the "nonviolent" claims in a Jan. 18 email.

Among those receiving presidential clemency, Weinsheimer noted, "we identified violent offenders, including those who committed acts of violence during the offense of conviction, or who otherwise have a history of violence ..."

Subsequent reporting has brought to light extensive correspondence between the West Wing and Justice Department as officials struggled to interpret just what it was the president was doing -- or whether he was even aware of what was being done.

After all, it wasn't his hand signing the papers; it was the autopen.

Four years earlier, when Biden was first taking office, his incoming staff secretary had told him his hand signature should be used for pardons, according to Axios.

Yet it hardly matters what he was told if, by the end, it wasn't Joe Biden running the Biden administration.

It's happened before:

A little more than a hundred years earlier, a stroke had left President Woodrow Wilson unable to discharge his duties.

But instead of a constitutional succession taking place, the president's wife and staff ran the administration in Wilson's place, with the president reduced to little more than a figurehead.

Today such a thing was supposed to be impossible -- the Constitution's 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967, spells out what's meant to happen when a president is non compos mentis.

Voters were left in little doubt about Biden's mental incapacity after his disastrous debate with Donald Trump in June of last year.

Democratic insiders already knew the score, but they were content to keep Biden in the race until the public's discovery of his condition made perpetuating the charade impossible.

Even so, Biden didn't resign, and his autopen continued to issue orders, including possibly life-and-death decisions about clemency.

To stop injustices like the failures that left Decarlos Brown free to kill a stranger, voters have to be able to hold officials accountable.

But which officials can they hold to account for an autopen?

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris haven't escaped the public's judgment, but behind them were Democrats whose names are unknown, yet whose actions America will long have to live with.

Whatever shadowy collective was behind the Biden autopen is still out there.

The Trump administration is right to investigate who was really in charge of our government when the elected president evidently was not.

What happened under Biden was a coup, and it's not mitigated by the fact that Democrats committed a coup against an incapable president of their own party.

The autopen is meant to represent the president, not take his place.

Cleaning up the crime in our streets -- and on public transportation -- is impossible without cleaning up the way government works, which means unmasking the officials responsible for decisions that endanger lives.

They can't be allowed to hide behind an automated signature or leaders who don't know what their pens are writing.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print