Trump was ‘begging the question’ when calling Biden’s autopen pardons ‘void,’ White House says
WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that President Trump was “begging the question” when declaring former President Joe Biden’s apparently auto-penned pardons were “void, vacant, and of no further force of effect” — as the practical effect of the current commander in chief’s pronouncement remains in question.
Leavitt said that Trump — who wrote on Truth Social media early Monday that recipients were henceforth “subject to investigation” — was “raising the point” that the clemency might not be legal.
“The president was raising the point that, ‘Did the president even know about these pardons? Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge?’” Leavitt said at her regular briefing Monday.
“Was he aware of his signature being used on every single pardon? That’s a question you should ask the Biden White House.”
Leavitt deflected when asked if Trump wanted the Justice Department or FBI to take action against the pardon recipients, including members of the since-disbanded House select committee that investigated his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, whom Republicans have accused of illegally destroying evidence assembled during the probe and of “witness tampering.”
“He has appointed great people — Attorney General Pam Bondi and also in our FBI Director Kash Patel — to do what they think is best for our justice system and to stop the weaponization of justice that we saw under the previous administration,” Leavitt said.
“We want to restore the Department of Justice to an institution that focuses on fighting [for] law and order and [against] crime and putting real criminals behind bars, not targeting Americans because of their religion or their political speech.”
Biden has not publicly spoken about his decision to issue preemptive pardons on the final day of his presidency to those members of Congress, as well as to Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of his own family — after pardoning son Hunter Biden on Dec. 1.
He did, however, express awareness about the debate over prophylactic pardons in the closing days of his term of office and no evidence exists that the pardons were issued without his consent — even though more broadly some aides suspect paperwork may have in some instances gone to the robotic pen without express presidential approval.
Legal experts and Republican sources aren’t sure what Trump’s claims that the pardons are null and void actually will have — and Trump himself acknowledged to reporters on Air Force One Sunday night that whether Biden’s signature on certain documents was invalid “would be up to a court.”
Mark Osler, a pardons expert at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota, told The Post that “it’s very hard to tell” what will come of Trump’s contention.
“It’s a pretty fluid situation at DOJ right now, and there’s new people in place in many key positions. I think they’re still working out what the relationship is between the White House and the DOJ — although clearly it’s gonna be very different than it’s been in the past,” Osler said.
Osler said that if Biden pardon recipients were to receive a subpoena as part of an investigation, they could challenge it in court by citing the sweeping comprehensive immunity conveyed by the ex-president.
It’s unclear if Biden would personally be deposed to establish that he consented to the pardons being sent to be auto-penned — which could be a humiliating moment for the 82-year-old Democrat.
Osler, a former federal prosecutor, notes that Trump “ran the whole time in 2016 on lock up Hillary Clinton, and then there really wasn’t even an investigation” after he assumed power of her use of a private email server for classified information as secretary of state.
An investigation into people who do have pardons, even if they aren’t prosecuted, “could lead to other people who potentially aren’t in Congress or don’t have the same set of defenses or pardons — that has happened many times,” he noted.
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