The Justice Department is investigating whether individuals around former President Joe Biden broke the law with their use of an autopen. Biden himself is not under investigation due to broad protections afforded by a Supreme Court decision granting presidents immunity for actions taken as part of their official duties while in office.
Key Takeaways
The Justice Department is investigating whether individuals around former President Joe Biden broke the law using an autopen. Biden himself is not under investigation due to presidential immunity protections. Prosecutors are examining if aides misused the device for unauthorized actions. The probe is ongoing despite reports suggesting it had stalled.
Prosecutors are looking into whether any of Biden's aides may have used the autopen for actions beyond those authorized by Biden during his final months in office. The investigation is one of several run by the Justice Department addressing complaints from former President Donald Trump, who has claimed that Biden's pardons signed using an autopen were not valid due to concerns about Biden's mental capacity.
A senior Justice Department official stated that presidential pardon powers are virtually limitless and that it is widely accepted that presidents can use an autopen for such actions. Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney who initially ran the probe, addressed concerns in a message to the House Oversight Committee chair, highlighting abuses connected to the Pardon office.
The investigation has been taken over by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, led by Trump ally Jeanine Pirro. Despite recent reports suggesting the probe had stalled, Pirro indicated on social media that the investigation is ongoing and cannot be commented upon due to its active status.
President Donald Trump has been vocal about his desire for the Justice Department to pursue cases against political adversaries, including those related to Biden's use of an autopen. The House Oversight Committee has also been involved in this matter, interviewing former staffers and alleging misuse of the device.
Biden has denied allegations that he did not personally approve pardons and other executive actions. He stated during a July interview with The New York Times that he orally approved all pardons and commutations endorsed at the end of his term, calling Trump's claims 'liars' and emphasizing that the autopen was used due to the volume of work.
The Justice Department on Thursday released additional Jeffrey Epstein files involving uncorroborated accusations made by a woman against President Trump. The department said those files had been “incorrectly coded as duplicative,” and therefore were inadvertently not published along with other investigative documents related to the disgraced financier, who killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.
Attorney General Pam Bondi faces continued turmoil over the department’s handling of the files released under a law passed by Congress after months of public and political pressure. Five Republicans on the House Oversight Committee joined Democrats in voting Wednesday to subpoena Bondi, demanding that she answer questions under oath.
The Trump administration has faced constant political headaches since the rollout of the files began in December, with critics accusing the department of hiding certain documents or over-redacting files. Department officials have defended their handling of the files, saying they took pains to release them as quickly as possible under the law while also protecting victims.
Some of the new records published Thursday pertained to a woman who contacted the FBI shortly after Epstein’s 2019 arrest and claimed that a man named “Jeff” living in Hilton Head, South Carolina, had raped her there in the 1980s when she was around 13 years old. The woman told the agents she didn’t know the man’s identity at the time but decades later concluded he was Jeffrey Epstein when a friend texted her his photo from a news story.
In a follow-up interview a month later, the woman added a host of other claims, including that Epstein had schemed to have her mother sent to prison, beaten her, arranged sexual encounters with other men and once flew her to either New Jersey or New York, where she claimed to have bitten Trump after he tried to sexually assault her. Agents spoke with the woman two more times but reported that she declined to answer additional questions and broke off contact.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, 'These are completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence, from a sadly disturbed woman who has an extensive criminal history.' She also pointed out that the Justice Department under the Biden administration knew of the accusations and did nothing with them.
Separately, it has emerged that the Justice Department has been taking down files on Epstein it had released. After removing tens of thousands of files, the department currently makes public about 2.7 million pages of documents related to Epstein, a CBS News analysis found, a number below the Department's initial claim of 3 million and which continues to fluctuate.
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