Jeanine Pirro Confirms That Criminal Investigation Into Biden’s Inner Circle and the Autopen Is Anything but Over

The United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Judge Jeanine Pirro, is increasingly being tasked with high-profile prosecutions, some of which concern alleged misconduct of prominent Democrats. Now she is confirming that her remit includes a possible prosecution of President Biden and his coterie of longtime advisers. The Times on Wednesday reported that Ms. Pirro’s office sought to prosecute President Biden and his top aides for the use of an autopen to sign presidential documents, including mass pardons, but “was ultimately unable to move forward with making a case.” Mr. Trump has long been focused on his predecessor’s cognitive abilities, and whether he was competent enough to issue preemptive pardons to his family and members of the House January 6 committee. Also under scrutiny is Mr. Biden’s commutations of death sentences for all but three condemned federal inmates. All of these pardons, save for the most polarizing pardon of all – the one for his son Hunter – were signed by the autopen. News reports In July 2025, the New York Times reported that in the final months of the Biden Administration, the White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, was verbally ordering aides to use the autopen to issue a large number of pardons. On Thursday morning Ms. Pirro’s official X account retweeted the latest Times piece and declared that “we cannot comment on ongoing investigations.” That appears to contradict the Times’s assessment that the probe was “quietly shelved.” The lead author of the Times piece, Michael Schmidt, is the second and current husband of MSNBC turned MS NOW star Nicolle Wallace who is known for her florid denunciations of Mr. Trump. While still a reporter for the Times, Mr. Schmidt co-wrote a political thriller, “Zero Day,” for reliably liberal Netflix, starring the virulently anti-Trump actor, Robert DeNiro. A report by the Republican-dominated House Oversight Committee concluded that “as President Biden declined, his staff abused the autopen and a lax chain-of-command policy to effect executive actions that lack any documentation.”Building a criminal case, though, could be a painstaking process. The conservative legal commentator Jonathan Turley wrote on X last year that “Many are suggesting that the Biden pardons may now be challenged in light of the disclosures of Biden’s use of an autopen. The chances of such challenges succeeding are vanishingly low. Presidents are allowed to use the autopen and courts will not presume a dead-hand conspiracy.” Ms. Pirro — she served as a jurist on the Westchester County court and is the erstwhile Westchester County attorney, the top prosecutor of the prosperous New York City suburb — became a successful television personality on Fox News’ top-rated “The Five” before she was appointed as one of America’s most powerful prosecutors. Mr. Trump’s first choice, Ed Martin, failed to garner enough votes for Senate confirmation. Ms. Pirro reports to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has reportedly come under criticism from the White House for failing to advance the president’s prosecutorial agenda.In June Mr. Trump signed an executive order directing Ms. Bondi and White House lawyers to review whether the use of the autopen broke the law. The order declares that “the Nation is governed through Presidential signatures” but that “it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline.” The order reckons that “This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history” because the “public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power.” The order directs the White House counsel, in coordination with Ms. Bondi, to determine “who directed that the President’s signature be affixed” to official documents — including a rush of pardons at the end of Mr. Biden’s term. The Times relates, though, that “investigators were never quite clear what crime, if any, had been committed by the Biden administration’s use of the autopen.” Another challenge to launching a case could, ironically, be one of Mr. Trump’s signal legal victories — the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States that official presidential acts are presumptively immune from prosecution, and that some acts in the heartland of presidential authority are entitled to “absolute immunity.”The pardoning power, it would appear, sits in the “conclusive and preclusive” category of presidential action. Alexander Hamilton writes in 74 Federalist that “the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.” In January The Sun reported that some 300 pardon and commutation records went missing during the Biden Administration. Their whereabouts have still not been ascertained. Mr. Biden dropped his reelection campaign in July of 2024, not long after he spectacularly underperformed and appeared disoriented in a presidential debate against Mr. Trump. He was replaced at the top of the ticket by Vice President Harris, but continued as president until Mr. Trump swore the oath for a second time. That interval has now come under intense scrutiny. The book “Original Sin,” by CNN host Jake Tapper and another reporter, Alex Thompson, of Axios, stated that a small group of Biden aides, nicknamed “The Politburo,” formed a tight circle around Mr. Biden during his last two years in office. These aides, along with key Biden family members — Jill Biden, Hunter Biden and Valerie Biden Owns — were important figures as Mr. Biden declined and was often behind closed doors or upstairs at the White House, a space largely off limits to most staff.Mr. Biden has said in a statement that “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.” The Oversight Committee, though, is requesting that the DOJ investigate “all of former President Biden’s executive actions, particularly clemency actions, to assess whether legal action must be taken to void any action that the former president did not, in fact, take himself.”Last month Ms. Pirro was rebuffed by a grand jury in her effort to bring criminal charges against six Democratic lawmakers who created a video in which they told American servicemembers that they should disobey “illegal orders.” The video’s implication was that the Trump Administration was the source of illegal orders, and that servicemen and women could face legal consequences once the Democrats return to power. The grand jury refused to hand up charges, a rare occurrence given that federal grand juries return charges more than 95 percent of the time. The nation’s capital, though, is dominated by Democrats — meaning that any jury pool is going to be difficult for a Republican administration to corral. Ms. Pirro has also been tasked with investigating the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. That probe turns on allegations of false statements about renovation cost overruns. Senator Thom Thillis, a Republican who is not seeking reelection after clashing with Mr. Trump, vows that he will oppose the nomination of Kevin Warsh to succeed Mr. Powell until the probe is resolved.

Jeanine Pirro Confirms That Criminal Investigation Into Biden’s Inner Circle and the Autopen Is Anything but Over

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