New Docs: Biden Officials Admit Pardon Blitz Wasn’t ‘Carefully’ Reviewed; Hunter Pardon Required Correction

Internal emails show Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney left out of vetting process

The Biden administration’s end-of-term pardon blitz was not “carefully” vetted through the usual channels, according to newly obtained internal emails that also reveal the Justice Department (DOJ) was forced to correct its own erroneous notification about President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter.

The records obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) show that the DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which is responsible for reviewing and investigating applications for executive clemency, did not vet “many” of the commutations issued by Biden.

In a January 2025 email responding to a U.S. Attorney seeking clarification about a commutation, then-Pardon Office Deputy Attorney Kira Gillespie apologized for the “confusion” and admitted, “Many of the cases that were granted commutation on January 17 were not vetted through our office, and so the data we had available was not reviewed as carefully as we would ordinarily hope it to be.”

The documents also show that the Pardon Office had to issue a correction after erroneously describing Hunter’s pardon as only beginning after he had completed his sentence.

In an email to outside government agencies, then-Senior Deputy Pardon Attorney Rosalind Sargent Burns wrote, “Earlier today we sent out an email noting that Robert Hunter Biden was granted a full and unconditional pardon after completion of sentence. Please be advised that the notation of ‘after completion of sentence’ was completed in error.”

Further, emails confirm earlier reports that the Pardon Office was “taken by surprise” by the Hunter pardon. Then-DOJ Public Affairs staffer Dena Iverson asked then-Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer for advice on how to respond to a journalist about to report the office was left in the dark, writing, “[I]f this is wrong and you want me to waive her off of that off the record let me know (though I understand that is generally true).”

Oyer responded that she was curious who the source was, “but it’s accurate.”

“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 pardon of all: the one for the president’s own son, Hunter,” said PPT Communications Director Alexa Moutevelis. “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.”

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AS SEEN ON FOX NEWS: Biden clemency blitz left DOJ scrambling as many commutations bypassed normal vetting, emails show