A top official in President Donald Trump’s Justice Department told colleagues that he has been asked to look into clemency granted by former President Joe Biden to members of his family and death row convicts during his final days in office.
Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, stated in an email obtained by Reuters that the probe focuses on whether Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through the use of AutoPen or other means.”
An autopen is a gadget that automatically signs a paper. Trump and his followers have made several unsubstantiated assertions, including that Biden’s use of the device while president invalidated his actions or that he was not fully aware of them. It is unclear whether Biden used an autopen for the pardons, Reuters noted.
According to the email, Martin’s research focuses on preemptive pardons awarded by Biden to many members of his family, as well as mercy that spared 37 federal convicts from the death penalty by reducing their sentences to life in prison.
Just before handing over the presidency to Trump on January 20, Biden pardoned five members of his family, claiming he wished to safeguard them from future politically driven probes.
Biden granted pardons to his siblings James Biden, Frank Biden, and Valerie Biden Owens, along with their wives, John Owens and Sara Biden. On December 1, Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who had pleaded guilty to tax irregularities and was convicted on firearms-related offenses.
Martin’s email did not disclose which of the Biden family members’ pardons were under investigation. It also did not specify who ordered Martin to initiate the probe.
Last week, Martin announced that he is investigating the questionable use of the presidential autopen for issuing pardons during the final days of the Biden administration.
Martin confirmed that the investigation into the autopen’s use has been active for some time, that he has contacted members of the Biden family, that several individuals of interest have retained legal counsel, and that a whistleblower has already come forward with serious allegations.
“I had a whistleblower in my office 10 day ago — senior, senior Democrat — saying, ‘Look, it was these three people that controlled access, and they were making money off of it,’” Martin told journalist Mark Halperin on the “2WAY Tonight” show. “I don’t know if I believe it yet, but the point is, I think, we have to get to the bottom of it for the American people and to protect the process, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Martin stated that the whistleblower was closely involved with the 2020 Biden campaign.
The pardon attorney identified three individuals as key “gatekeepers”: Ron Klain, who served as President Biden’s White House chief of staff from 2021 to 2023 and returned last year to assist with debate preparations; former senior Biden adviser Anita Dunn; and Robert Bauer, former personal attorney to President Barack Obama.
Martin later added two more names to the list—Steve Ricchetti, former counselor to President Biden and chairman of his 2020 campaign, and “obviously Jill [Biden],” the First Lady.
He also told Halperin that he asked the whistleblower about the involvement of Susan Rice or others, but “they said, ‘No, these were the ones.’”
Power the Future, a nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs, reviewed eight Biden executive orders that it claims were significant shifts in domestic energy policy and discovered no evidence of the president discussing any of them publicly, raising concerns that the orders were signed by autopen and he was unaware of them.
“These are not obscure bureaucratic memos; these were foundational shifts in American energy policy, yet not once did Joe Biden speak about them publicly,” Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power The Future, told Fox News.
The executive orders examined by Power the Future include an Arctic drilling ban in 2023, a 2021 executive order committing the federal government to net-zero emissions by 2050, an executive order mandating “clean energy” AI centers, and an offshore drilling ban executive order issued shortly before leaving office in 2025.
