Report alleging Biden officials raised concerns over autopen use resurfaces
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Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen appeared on Fox News’ “Saturday in America” this weekend with host Kayleigh McEnany, where the two discussed a topic from September. Report from Axios He claimed that senior Biden administration officials questioned and criticized the way the former president’s team administered pardons and used automatic closures in the final days of his tenure in the White House.
The report, dated September 6, resurfaced after President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he would terminate all documents allegedly signed by former President Joe Biden via autopen.
While McEnany acknowledged that the use of auto-opening was “extraordinary” in the White House and that “every president has done it,” she argued that the Biden administration’s use of the tool was unusual and cited the Axios report as evidence.
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President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will terminate all documents purportedly signed by President Joe Biden via autopen. (Getty Images; Fox News)
McEnany, who previously served as press secretary during Trump’s first administration, noted in the report that Biden claimed the staff secretary responsible for managing the “paper flow” repeatedly requested additional details to confirm the president’s intention to auto-open.
“It wasn’t common for me to question whether Trump approved of something,” he added, before asking Thiessen if he had the same experience while serving as President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter.
Thiessen shared a story that reveals how far Bush went to avoid using the tool, noting that there is a decision from the Office of Legal Counsel that recognizes that automatic shutdowns are legal as long as the president intends to do so.
“Bush didn’t want to be in doubt on certain things. So I remember one time there was an ongoing decision to keep the government open and he was at the APEC summit in Asia and they actually took an aide and flew the bill to Asia so he could physically sign the bill,” she recalled. “So, you know, how serious is this? [Bush] He took this.”
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The problem for Biden, the former Bush staffer argued, was that “everyone now knows that he’s mentally unstable”—that is, not in his right mind—and that there are “people making decisions for him all the time.”
Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany and former Bush staffer Marc Thiessen on the set of “Saturday in America” on Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025. (Fox News Channel)
“The secretary general clearly had concerns about this and was aware of it and wasn’t sure Biden was actually giving those orders,” he continued. “And, you know, pardons are vested in the president himself. And it’s a pretty bad thing that the autopen is signing off on pardons when the people who run the autopen aren’t even sure if the president has agreed to pardon someone.”
Closing the segment, McEnany added that the Department of Justice (DOJ) also questioned the pardon process under the Biden administration, which broke the presidential record for the most pardons and commutations granted to individuals.
A person familiar with the clemency process told Axios that after Biden pardoned his son Hunter on Dec. 1, 2024, “it was a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon, and then those people were largely not run by the Justice Department to vet them.”
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In September, the news outlet reported that several senior Justice Department officials had expressed concerns to the White House counsel’s office about the process of pardoning individuals.
Additionally, senior Biden White House officials internally turned down requests to use auto-opening, according to Axios, which cited emails it obtained.
Biden said White House staff secretary Stef Feldman repeatedly asked for more information and confirmed Biden’s intentions regarding the autopen.
Former President Joe Biden. (Susan Walsh/AP)
“When did we get [Biden’s] Feldman reportedly wrote in a Jan. 7 email about using autopen to sign an executive order.
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“I will need an email confirming the original chain [Biden] In a Jan. 16 email, he wrote about using automatic confinement to commute sentences tied to crack cocaine cases, Axios reported.
Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report.
