WASHINGTON — The pardon issued by former President Joe Biden to disgraced son Hunter appears to have been given a more personal touch than the ones granted to other family members, documents show.
There is a striking discrepancy in the signatures that the 82-year-old ostensibly inked on the documents granting clemency to Hunter and first siblings James Biden, Frank Biden and Valerie Biden Owens — as well as their spouses, John Owens and Sara Biden.
The handwriting on Hunter’s blanket Dec. 1, 2024, pardon for any offenses committed over a 10-year span appears shaky, contains an uphill slant and thinner ink, suggesting lighter pressure was applied on the document in comparison to the clemency granted to the others in the Biden clan.
The bold, fluid and smooth signature on the last-minute Jan. 19, 2024, pardon for the first siblings — for possible offenses dating back to 2014 — more closely resembles Biden’s signature on several other presidential documents, including pardons to Anthony Fauci and retired Gen. Mark Milley.
The discrepancy has raised suspicions that the signature on the Hunter pardon is the former president’s actual handwriting, whereas what is inked on the subsequent clemencies is not.
“Perhaps those documents were signed with the autopen,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday, when shown the dramatic differences in handwriting by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.
Leavitt noted that the former commander in chief’s use of autopen in the waning days of his presidency is “something that I believe the Department of Justice is looking into.”
The Post has learned that President Trump’s DOJ is indeed investigating whether Biden was “competent” enough to grant pardons as he prepared to leave office.
Department of Justice pardon attorney Ed Martin instructed staff in an email Monday to probe the extent to which Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.”
Martin’s email was first reported by Reuters.
The investigation will focus on pardons for five first family members and sentence commutations issued in December 2024 for 37 of the 40 men currently on federal death row — including multiple child killers and mass murderers.
Biden’s signature on the death-row clemency document appears to resemble the one on the pardon for James, Frank, Valerie and company.
Martin said last month that the presidential pardon power is “plenary,” or absolute, but instances where an autopen was used to sign off on clemency warranted more scrutiny.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), who is leading a congressional probe into Biden’s competency and use of autopen, is seeking to determine if the former president was actually aware of what staffers were stamping his name on during his final weeks in the White House.
“We’re starting with these staffers that we know were the ones who manually put the documents in the autopen and pressed the power button to sign Joe Biden’s signature,” Comer told Fox News host Sean Hannity Tuesday. “We want to know who told them to do what and when and we want to know that Joe Biden actually gave the authority to do that.
“That Joe Biden was cognitively aware of what he was doing and if he even told them to use the autopen,” he added.
“The amount of executive orders that were signed in the last 90 days of the Biden presidency is breathtaking. I don’t think the average American realizes how much activity there was in this White House at a time when almost every American now realizes that Joe Biden was completely checked out.”
Trump, 78, has claimed that his predecessor “did not sign” the blanket pardons in his final weeks, some of which also shielded members of the House Select January 6th Committee.
“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” he posted on Truth Social in March.
Dozens of executive orders and pardons were signed using the mechanical device, according to an analysis conducted by the Oversight Project that month, a former offshoot of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Ex-Biden White House sources have also suggested that one of the 46th president’s aides may have liberally used the autopen for some signatures in the final days of the administration.
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said Tuesday that it will be “very hard” for investigators to prove Biden didn’t actually issue the pardons.
“You’d have to hear from Biden himself admitting it wasn’t him. It’s highly, highly unlikely,” Rahmani said. “You’d need some smoking-gun evidence.”
Mike Howell, who runs the Oversight Project and shared evidence based on the autopen analysis with the Justice Department, said his team has been “cooperating with all lawful investigations.
“The [use of the] autopen as a default mechanism really picked up in speed toward the later parts of the administration,” Howell noted, “even in times when Biden was in the White House.”
The Oversight Project leader has also indicated he hopes the DOJ will question sources who spoke with Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN anchor Jake Tapper for their recently published book, “Original Sin,” on the president’s cognitive decline.
House and Senate Republicans have already announced investigations into Biden’s mental acuity during his term, with the lower chamber’s Oversight panel seeking to haul in a slate of witnesses, including White House physician Kevin O’Connor this month.
Presidents have used an autopen to sign official documents dating back to Harry Truman’s post-World War II tenure, though the Trump White House has since instituted a “far more restrictive” policy.
Only staff secretary Will Scharf and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles have been given the authority to use it “for all matters.”
A spokeswoman for the Biden family declined to comment. Reps for the DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
