Biden clemency blitz left DOJ scrambling as many commutations bypassed normal vetting, emails show
- August 13, 2026
Alec Schemmel, Fox News
Justice Department (DOJ) officials scrambled after former President Joe Biden’s end-of-term clemency grants were announced, trying to determine what some decisions actually covered and correcting errors in others — part of a broader clemency process that drew criticism from former U.S. pardon attorneys, a federal judge and other officials, internal emails show.
The records were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) and shared with Fox News Digital.
In one exchange, involving a career offender convicted in a series of crack-cocaine trafficking cases, prosecutors were left asking whether Biden had commuted a separate 235-month sentence for the man that was not explicitly listed. The question prompted a deputy pardon attorney to offer the “most sensible reading,” while acknowledging that “many” of Biden’s Jan. 17 commutations had bypassed the agency’s normal pardon-office vetting and did not undergo the typical level of review.
In another episode, the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPA) was caught off guard by Hunter Biden’s pardon and later had to correct a notice that incorrectly described him as receiving it “after completion of sentence” — even though he had not yet been sentenced, never would be, and the pardon was full and unconditional. Officials also spent days working through how to authenticate and transmit the pardon to the court.
“This paints a troubling picture of a pardon process driven by politics and haste rather than the careful deliberation such extraordinary acts of executive clemency demand,” added PPT’s communications director Alexa Moutevelis. “The Justice Department pardon office’s own emails show the final Biden auto-pen blitz was so clumsy and rushed that the chaos extended even to the most high-profile and controversial of all: his own son, Hunter.”