Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on Wednesday called on former President Joe Biden to release internal records showing whether he personally authorized the use of a mechanical autopen to sign pardons and clemency grants amid mounting allegations that the device was frequently used even while Biden was present in Washington, D.C.
During a Senate hearing Wednesday into the alleged cover-up by Biden aides over the former president’s mental decline, Hawley pressed expert witness Theodore Wold over how the law governs autopen use, warning that if Biden never gave personal “consent” to its deployment on key executive actions, its use could amount to a constitutional breach.
“For every time that Biden authorized the autopen, there should be a record of that,” Hawley said, warning that the Senate’s subpoena powers could be necessary if there is no compliance from the former president. “He should have had to have registered his personal consent.”
Wold, a former Justice Department official under President Donald Trump’s first term and counsel to Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), is also a board member for the Oversight Project, a conservative government watchdog that has investigated the previous administration’s autopen usage for months. He agreed that under long-standing White House procedure, the president’s consent should be documented in the policy flow from the staff secretary’s office to the Oval Office.
“There should be a record of what documents are presented to the president, when, and when he gave his consent,” Wold said.
The exchange comes as the Oversight Project recently revealed its investigations have uncovered that Biden used at least three different autopen signatures, which the watchdog labeled Autopens A, B, and C, throughout his presidency, including in situations where he was physically in the White House and signing other documents by hand.
The autopen was used on at least eight separate dates in 2022 alone when Biden was publicly active in D.C., including on Aug. 3, when he hand-signed bills but used the autopen for an executive order on abortion access, according to the Oversight Project.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on former President Biden and the autopen: "If you want an answer to the question 'Did Joe Biden actually assent to the use of the autopen?'… There should be a record of it. This is a binary question…I call on President Biden…release the documents." pic.twitter.com/VWhaAhAwed
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 18, 2025
“This is a binary question,” Hawley said. “If you want to know … did Joe Biden actually consent to the use of the auto pen and all of the people he pardoned? He granted clemency to murderers, drug dealers, child rapists. Let’s find out.”
Hawley said if Biden “won’t do it, we should subpoena those documents, and we should find out the truth of who was really running the White House.”
On Dec. 12, 2024, Biden commuted 1,499 sentences and pardoned 39 individuals in what the White House called the largest single-day clemency in modern U.S. history. Notably, he also commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates that same month.
Republicans have also criticized a number of eyebrow-raising pardons he offered to his family members, including his son, Hunter Biden. Biden made the unprecedented decision to issue preemptive pardons for his two brothers, James and Francis, and for several high-profile figures, including former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, and former Gen. Mark Milley.
While Democrats have hit out against Trump’s mass clemency of over 1,200 people stemming from their involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Republicans have said Biden’s preemptive pardons of high-profile figures and close family members was a greater abuse of the pardon authority, leading to a political debate about the president’s pardon powers.
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Biden’s office has not publicly commented on the records, and a spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump earlier this month also called on the DOJ to launch an investigation as the House Oversight Committee also looks at Biden’s mental fitness and his use of the autopen, so far conducting a more focused investigation that seeks to interview former aides and staffers to Biden.
