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your support. Yes, I did see Elmo's posts on Twitter's
Yeah first Kanye, Now Elmo really like Okay, I'll explain later.
I want to start with this story out of the
New York Times, which I'm not really sure. Well, okay,
I think that this was done as a damage control
operation by Biden World. They gave the New York Times.
This is my complete speculation, but it seems like they
gave the New York Times access to some of the
emails that got turned over as part of the various
investigations into Joe Biden's cognitive decline and whether or not
he was actually, you know, of sound mind when he
was signing off on all of these pardons and commutations
in the final hours of his presidency, and so I
think it started off as a way to like get
ahead of the story, damage control, put our spin on things.
But I'm not so sure it's actually going to serve
that purpose. So I've read the New York Times article.
I've got the highlights of it, and I think it'll
become clear why I am betting, but not really betting,
because I'm not betting on this, but why. I think
that this came from the New York came from Biden
World to the New York Times. So, first off, Biden
gave an interview to the New York Times. It was
over the phone. It was only like ten minutes or so,
And it's my understanding that this was the first New
York Times interview that Joe Biden gave, like since he
became president, he never sat for an interview with the Times.
Number one, number two. The Archives turned over all of
these emails to the Congressional committee that's investigating and I
think maybe DOJ and they got tens of thousands of emails,
but The New York Times only got about a couple dozen.
So how would that happen? Right? So they obviously did
not get it all from the Congressional Committee, and if
Biden sits for the interview with the Times. To me,
it's pretty clear that they gave The New York Times
Times a couple a dozen emails in order to advance
this narrative that Joe Biden personally approved of every pardon
and commutation that was issued in the waning days of
his presidency. However, some of the emails don't actually prove that.
So that's the slight problem, which, yeah, we'll get to
it here. This is the piece of The New York
Times by Charlie Savage and Tyler Pager. Former President Joseph R.
Biden Junior is escalating his battle against Republican claims that
he might not have been in control of high profile
clemency decisions issued under his name at the end of
his first term, and more generally, that his cognitive state
impaired his functioning in office. In an interview with The
New York Times, mister Biden said he had orally granted
all the pardons and commutations issued at the end of
his term, so he said, he spoke it into existence.
I approve all of these. Keep that point in mind.
He claims in this interview that he orally agreed or
granted all the pardons and commutations, and he called Trump
and other Republicans' liars for claiming that his aides had
used an auto pen to do so without his authorization.
That paragraph, second paragraph of the piece. I'm going to
come back to it, because that's the central claim from Biden.
Joe Biden said, quote look, Jack, which means I made
every decision. He says, I made every decision, asserting that
he had his staff use an autopen that replicates his signature.
He says they only did that because we're talking about
a whole lot of people. Yeah, there were thousands, thousands
of pardons and commutations granted. There are parallel investigations run
by the Trump White House and the Justice Department and Congress.
Republicans in Congress have demanded sworn interviews with former Biden aids,
prompting them to hire their own lawyers. More about that later.
Mister Biden's former White House doctor, who said his medical
evaluations showed Joe Biden fit as a fiddle, he invoked
the Fifth Amendment when he was called to answer questions.
He refused. His lawyer cited the pending Justice Department inquiry
and the risk of being ensnared in ambiguous circumstances. What
does that mean? Perjury traps? You know the kind that
the Obama and Biden doj ran against Republicans. Perjury traps.
You get somebody to give you some information. Maybe they
don't even realize they're being interviewed as part of some probe,
like General Mike Flynn, and the next thing you know,
you're getting slapped with making false statements to you know,
FBI agents because you didn't remember something or you said
something that was incorrect, but you didn't realize you were
being interviewed as part of some sort of a criminal probe.
So tens of thousands of Biden White House emails were
turned over by the National Archives turned over as part
of the investigations. The Times reviewed several dozen. Don't know
how many several, so like a couple would be two dozen,
But do people actually say a couple dozen? I guess
maybe a few dozen. I feel like that would be
like three dozen. I think when you're at several dozen,
I think you're in the four or five. So maybe
they looked at about sixty or so emails, because if
it was more than one hundred, they would have said
more than one hundred. If it was hundreds, they would
have set hundreds. So I got to think it's like
sixty to seventy or so out of tens of thousands.
So what does that tell me that these emails were curated? Right?
These emails were curated out of the tens of thousands,
and they were given to the New York Times in
order to direct their coverage. Now, the Times does point
out they have not seen the full extent of the emails,
so it is impossible to capture the totality of information
they contain, or what else they might show about mister
Biden's involvement in the pardon and clemency decisions. But the
Biden White House says it had a process to establish
that mister Biden had orally made decisions in meetings before
the staff secretary, a woman named Stephanie Feldman. She managed
the use of the auto pen, and that would have
covered the clemency records that would have gone through the
signing device. Okay, so he says, yes, do it, and
then they write up these little blurbs they called them.
But it all starts with Joe Biden giving oral approval
and then staff scurries around and issues the pardons. Okay,
this is the premise of the narrative that they are advancing.
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I do have a message from a seven oh four number,
so glad you are back. Well, thank you. I am
glad to be back and let me see here. That's
events from the last thing. But then there was another
message for yes, January sixth was a sweeping part in
not individually correct. That is correct, and that is what
the Biden world people. The Biden people are making the
argument that they are or they did these mass pardons
based on like a criteria. That's what Donald Trump did.
He said, you know, all j sixers. In fact, that's
what Jimmy Carter did when he gave pardons for all
of the draft Dodgers. It's like half a million of them.
But that's a class of people. That's a criteria based
pardon system. That's not exactly what happened with Biden though. Okay,
so the New York Times piece talks about how the
debate performance June twenty twenty four, everybody realizes what we
realized years ago is that Joe Biden is having some
cognitive issues. Blank stares, mouth a gape, seemingly confused. Not
able to string together sentences, trails off in the middle
of words like that stuff occurring for years, And then
The Newyor Times writes this age related cognitive decline is
a spectrum. Oh so it's like gender. At one end,
many older people become more prone to blanking on names
or losing their train of thought when speaking at length,
but remain able to process information and make reasoned decisions.
And at the other end of the spectrum, some develop
profound dementia. Thank you for that update there. Maybe you
guys could have explored where Joe Biden was on that
spectrum sometime before, like a minute ago. That might have
been helpful. Republicans are positing an extreme version, claiming mister
Biden was incapacitated. They are speculating that his staff conspired
to use the auto pen to make presidential decisions in
his name. Yes, you see, that's why they need to
interview the people to find out if they were in
fact doing that. Yes, because there is evidence to suggest
that that did occur. When Joe Biden blanks on orders
that he issued and doesn't know that he signed things
earlier in his term, did he just forget at that
moment or did he actually not know that he signed
this thing because he didn't sign it. Maybe that's possible.
You also have the book Original Sin Jake Tapper and
Alex Thompson and how they describe this, you know, core
group of aids and advisors and family members that had,
you know, formed this protective bubble around Joe Biden to
the point where his own cabinet officials couldn't get meetings
with him, couldn't see him. So is it possible that
they were running the show? Well, Tapper and Thompson said, yeah.
They called them the polyp Bureau. At the end of
his term, Biden reduced the sentences of nearly four thousand
federal convicts and preemptively pardoned politically prominent people that he
considered potential targets of mister Trump. Biden said in Thursday's
interview that he had his staff use an autopen for
the warrants because he had granted clemency to so many people.
The autopen was used in all on twenty five pardon
and clemency warrants from December through January. Okay, but the
warrants had many people listed. Some of the individual warrants
included large batches of names because they all fell into
a broad category, a same policy category, like reducing the
sentences of nonviolent drug offenders who met standards that Biden established.
See this is now now they're giving some detail here
about this the structure of the criteria that Biden orally says, yes,
do this, and then you've got the staff filling up
the you know, the kitty or the hopper of all
of the names that meet this criteria. But there was
a problem. It was the Bureau of Prisons, I believe
where they kept here. Yeah, here it is. This is
later on this like halfway through this article. Even after
mister Biden made that decision, which was that he did
not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that
applied to large numbers of people. Rather, after extensive discussion
of different possible criteria, he signed off on the standards
he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would
qualify for a reduction in sentence. Even after mister Biden
made that decision, one former aide said, the Bureau of
Prisons kept providing additional information about specific inmates, resulting in
small changes to the list, rather than ask mister Biden
to keep signing revised versions. His staff waited and then
ran the final version through the auto pen, which they
saw as a routine procedure. So what's happening there. He's like,
give you the criteria. Joe Biden gives the criteria, and
then the staff tells the Bureau of Prisons find out
everybody that meets this criteria, and they draft the warrants,
and then the Bureau of Prison comes back, Oh, we
found some more. Oh we're gonna make some changes. Oh
we're gonna do this. Oh we're gonna do that. And
then after the Bureau of Prisons was done, that's when
they were like, okay, sign off on all of it.
And they thought that was routine. That's a routine procedure.
So it never went back to him for final approval. Okay.
So maybe he's going to say, well, you know, I
gave oral approval. I said this is the category I want,
and so it doesn't matter that they never came back
to me for the final approval before the auto pen. Okay.
So that's one issue. And again this is only based
off of fifty sixty seventy emails that The New York
Times was given along with their first ever interview of
Joe Biden for ten minutes over the phone, where he
basically gave them four sentences as soundbites. And that's it.
That's all that's in this piece. This screams to me,
Biden World pr damage control. They gave the Times the story,
they gave the Times the new or the emails, and
then they gave them an interview in order to try
to manage the fallout that is occurring off of this
auto pen story. But that's not even the worst one.
The worst one is about Fauci's pardon. Here's a great idea.
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Times article this came out yesterday. Biden says he made
the clemency decisions recorded with auto pen Again. I believe
that this is the Biden world. People that are doing
damage control. He gave a ten minute interview to The
New York Times, which requested it as part of its
reporting on the investigations. Mister Biden said he shielded people
with the pardons, the preemptive pardons, guys like Mark Milly
Anthony Fauci right along with members of his family, so
they would not have to run up large legal bills
from politically motivated investigations by the Trump Justice Department, which
is like ultimate projection. Right now, you're concerned about the
weaponization of the Department of Justice against political enemies. Oh,
that's interesting. I wonder where Trump would have gotten that idea.
So then there is this on the during the final
days of the Biden presidency October thirtieth, reviewed by The
Time show that Biden's White House counsel, a guy by
the name of Ed Siskel, notified senior staff to expect
a flood of lobbying for clemency grants at the administration's end,
because this is when you do it, when there's no
political price to pay for getting people, you know, free
and clear of their convictions in a court of law.
And so Ciskell tells everybody, Hey, expect this, and here's
the process for an orderly review. The final step, he wrote,
quote the president makes the final decision on the final
pardon end or commutation slate. So if you got a
bunch of names. That's the final step, and then over
the next three months, mister Biden made four major sets
of clemency actions that were recorded with the auto pen.
The emails reviewed by The Times included discussions about all
four batches or tranches they use the term. Also, three
of the four batches applied to broad categories people. He
reduced the sentences of inmates sent to home confinement during
the pandemic, as well as certain nonviolent drug offenses, and
he turned the death sentences of thirty seven of the
forty federal inmates on death row. He turned him into
life without parole thirty seven out of forty. The fourth
set was announced on Biden's last day. They included the
preemptive pardons for members of his own family and various
people who have drawn mister Trump's ire. The emails reflect
White House activities surrounding each of those trunches, including the
dates of the meetings at which White House officials indicate
Biden made decisions and the names of the senior aides
who were in attendance. They also show that the use
of the auto pen was managed by Biden's White House
staff secretary MS Feldman. She wanted to receive written accounts
confirming Biden's oral instructions in the meetings before having it
used to produce the warrants that would record the clemency actions.
So she's asking, I need something in writing that Biden
agreed to this, because I guess she's not there. She
was not in the room. She did not get the
oral consent. The AIDS referred to those written accounts of
meetings at which Biden delivered oral decisions as blurbs. Okay,
so staff is writing these blurbs. You see the problem here, right,
What if staff is just writing the blurbs and not
actually getting any kind of oral consent from Joe. The
accounts were drafted by AIDS to the senior advisors who
had participated in key meetings. Oh wait, it's even worse.
There's another layer there. It's not even the people that
are in the meetings. It's the staff of those people
in the meetings. They're writing the blurbs, giving them to Feldman,
and then Feldman's doing the autopen. The assistants who drafted
the blurbs were not themselves in the room with Biden.
The emails implied the mister Ciskell and Jeffrey Zience relayed
what Biden had said to the assistants, who then documented it.
So he got these two guys. The assistants circulated the
drafts back to Ciskell and Science and other meeting participants,
and then they would send the final versions to Feldman
and she would sign the autopen. Biden did not individually
approve each name for the big categories, right, the categorical pardons,
like all of the death row people. He said that
because that applied to really large groups of people. Rather,
after extensive discussion of different possible criteria, he signed off
on the standards that he wanted to be used to
determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction and sentence.
Even after he made that to decision, though Bureau of
Prisons kept giving him additional information about specific inmates, the
list kept changing. I already went over that, and they
would just auto pennant after it was all revised. Biden
completed the list of high profile clemency decisions over two meetings.
Then this is the fourth group, one meeting January eighteenth,
including Zience and Siskel, and another aid Bruce Reid. And
then that was the eighteenth January eighteenth, so two days
before he's leaving office. Right the next day, the nineteenth,
there's another meeting his final night as president. Siskell read
and three other aids Anthony Bernall that was Jill Biden's
chief of staff, Steve Richetti, and Annie Thomasini. These were
the Pollit Bureau people identified in the book. The emails
showed that mister Biden added the preemptive pardons for his
family at the January nineteenth meeting, took place at the
Yellow Oval Room of the White House Residents. Biden kept
his aids until nearly ten percent ten pm. Rather, I
don't know, I said percent ten pm. Okay, this is
now sounding alarms for me, because Joe Biden didn't do
anything except fail at debate performances after nine pm. But
where to believe he was in this meeting until ten
pm to talk through all of the decisions. The emails
show that an aid to Siskel sent a draft summary
of Biden's decisions at that meeting, So again, not somebody
in the room, Siskel in the room. Ciskell has his
assistant draft up the blurb. Right then that blurb gets
sent to Sience and Ciskel at ten oh three pm.
The assistant forwards it to Read and Science asking for
their approval, and then sent a final version to Feldman,
copying many meeting participants and aids that went at ten
twenty eight minutes later, Science hit reply all and said, quote,
I approve the use of the autopen for the execution
of all of the following pardons. I don't think that
you're allowed to do that. You approve that, wouldn't that
have to be Joe Biden? This is this does not
look good to me. You've got people writing up synopsies
of what was discussed in a meeting that they weren't in.
You've got another layer sending it to the autopen keyholder there,
and she's just relying on the blurbs. She's just doing
it because you've told her Joe Biden said she should
do it. But there isn't any actual proof that he
did tell her to do that, that he could consent.
And then of course there's the question of whether he
could consent if he's not in a cognitive state eight
to consent to understand what he's doing. That's another component.
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piece over at twitchy dot com by Aaron Walker. He
says he lays out a couple of things regarding the
legality of this issue. He says, first, only the president
can issue to issue a federal pardon, that's a duty
that he cannot delegate. Secondly, an auto pen can be
used to do any act that requires the president's signature,
but only if the President consents to his signature being
placed on the document. Third if that consent was not given,
then as a matter of constitutional law, no pardon was
actually issued. That's gonna be the rub. So if Trump
declares one of Biden's pardons to be null and void
for that reason, and he isn't revoking the pardon, he's
saying none was issued in the first place. And for
the record, no president can revoke a pardon once properly issued.
Another point, no pardon could issue without Biden's consent. The
issue isn't just the use of the auto pen. The
issue is consent, and we are wondering if he really
gave his consent. The line about final approval by Jeffrey Zeinz,
that line suggests they knew they needed his consent, But
did they actually follow that procedure. That's the question, particularly
on the pardons that were done the very last day,
in literally the ninth or the well the I don't
know why they call it the eleventh hour. I guess
it was the ninth hour and the tenth hour of
his presidency. He's about to leave, he's got less than
he's got like fifteen hours left on his presidency, and
they do this whole ram of preemptive pardons. What else here?
So on Jeffrey seines when he hit the reply, all
I approved the use of the auto pen. So apparently
he says it was not Joe Biden giving final approval
as they said originally. Apparently it was sience that was
approving this to the staff. He also has to have
the legal capacity to consent. Joe Biden does. So if
Trump wanted to render the pardon a nullity, they would
have to show that when Joe Biden put pen to
paper he lacked the legal capacity to consent due to
his cognitive decline. We're not saying that is definitely the case.
The author of the piece acknowledges that he does not know,
only that this is likely the only way the Trump
administration can undermine the Hunter Biden pardon. As for the
categorical groups, it's more complicated. Presidents can and do issue
categorical pardons. I mentioned Jimmy Carter, he did like half
a million for the Draft Dodgers, and so Biden doing
categorical pardons would have been fine, but instead the Biden
administration didn't pardon categories. They pardoned specific people that allegedly
met Biden's criteria. So he commutes the sentence for a
long list of people. But by the New York Times
is reporting here, Biden didn't seem to approve of who
was actually on the list. He just said, here's my criteria.
They then put a bunch of people on the list.
That's problematic. Mike Bens he is the host of Well,
He's a former State Department cyber guy, executive director of
FFO Freedom, and he does a podcast as well, and
he points out that Jeffrey Zeinz, the guy who signed
off and said I approved the autopen for this Fauci pardon,
he was the main social media censorship coordinator in the
White House, using the power of the White House to
threaten big tech companies if they did not censor US
citizens who questioned the Biden administration's COVID policies. And Ben's
goes on to say that Fauci was pardoned by the
White House COVID nineteen coordinator who coincidentally apparently made tens
of millions of dollars off financial bets exploiting federal government
healthcare policies. But I'm sure there's nothing to see here.
Sean Davis at The Federalist says there's no direct contemporaneous
evidence that Biden authorized any of the last minute autopen
pardons all. The New York Times provides his claims from
staff that he totally said the autopen was okay and
stuff totally fine, everybody, It's all totally fine. All right.
That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
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