It’s not a conspiracy theory anymore. It’s not a partisan jab. It’s not “disinformation.” It’s the plain, uncomfortable truth: Joe Biden wasn’t running the country. His staff was. And the autopen scandal just exposed the whole thing.
We now know that thousands of official presidential documents—including more than 8,000 pardons and 4,200 commutations—were signed with a machine. Not with Joe Biden’s hand. Not even with Joe Biden’s awareness, in many cases. A literal machine was propped up in place of a functioning president.
Let that sink in.
The Oversight Project first dropped the bombshell earlier this year: Biden’s infamous autopen wasn’t just used occasionally. It was used extensively—and secretly. One example? On December 30, 2022, while Biden was relaxing in St. Croix, his autopen was back in D.C., pardoning six federal criminals. His staff didn’t even try to hide it.
House Oversight Project finds the "Biden presidency" was almost entirely run by autopen signature.
"We gathered every document we could find with Biden's signature over the course of his presidency," says @OversightPR.
"All used the same autopen signature except for the the… pic.twitter.com/tCj7r5iYvi
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) March 6, 2025
The White House brushed it off as “routine.” But now, even The New York Times—yes, the same New York Times that carried water for Biden for four years—is pulling the rug out from under him.
In a rare act of journalism, the Times obtained internal emails between Biden staffers and the National Archives. Those emails show something staggering: presidential decisions were being made, and executed, without Biden’s involvement.
Take the December 2022 drug pardons. The Bureau of Prisons kept altering the list of inmates. Instead of checking back with the president to approve the final list—as you’d expect in any functioning government—Biden’s staff simply ran it through the autopen. He never saw the names. He never signed off. It was all done on his behalf, while he was off the clock.
This wasn’t a fluke. It was standard operating procedure. Just ask Neera Tanden.
Tanden, a longtime Democratic Party insider and current domestic policy advisor, admitted under oath to the House Oversight Committee that she used the autopen without verifying Biden’s approval. She wasn’t “guessing” what he wanted. She was calling the shots. Biden’s own signature was reduced to a rubber stamp—and his staffers held the stamp.
Chief of Staff Jeff Zients was even worse. According to the Times, one aide emailed him a “draft summary” of Biden’s decisions for a wave of final-day pardons, including Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, and Hunter Biden. Zients took three minutes to review the list before replying, “I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons.”
Three minutes. For some of the most politically sensitive pardons in American history.
And Biden? He signed only one of them by hand: Hunter’s. That’s the one he remembered. The rest? Not so much.
When questioned by the Times, Biden grew defensive. “I made every decision!” he insisted. “I consciously made all those decisions.” But the Times didn’t buy it—and neither should you.
Because this isn’t just about the autopen. It’s about a deeper rot in the Biden administration: the man who sat in the Oval Office wasn’t calling the shots. His aides were—and they weren’t even shy about it.
The entire final chapter of the Biden presidency—pardon decisions, commutations, even executive orders—was orchestrated by unelected staffers who were operating independently, unaccountably, and in many cases, anonymously.
So who were they taking orders from?
We now know that Biden wasn’t even looped into the decision-making process. If top staff like Tanden and Zients could unilaterally execute major legal actions without presidential review, then what exactly was Biden doing all day? Golf? Ice cream runs? Brief scripted appearances?
Here’s what it looks like: a president too cognitively frail to govern, surrounded by operatives who weaponized the executive branch for political payoffs and legacy protection. Fauci gets a pardon. Milley gets a pardon. Hunter Biden gets his get-out-of-jail-free card. And it’s all handled by staffers with zero oversight, using a machine that’s more awake than the man it’s impersonating.
This is deeper than scandal. It’s a constitutional crisis.
The autopen was never meant to become the Commander-in-Chief. But that’s what it became under Joe Biden—and now the American people deserve answers. Not from his staff. Not from his PR team. But from Biden himself.
If he even remembers.