WASHINGTON — Troubled former first son Hunter Biden weighed in on pardons his dad Joe Biden signed before departing the presidency, ex-White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told a House committee Thursday, according to sources familiar with his testimony.
“Toward the end of the Biden administration, Hunter Biden was involved with the pardon discussions and attended a few meetings,” the source revealed of Zients’ comments, confirming prior reports about how much influence the first son exerted amid a firearms felony conviction and pleading guilty to tax evasion.
A second source with knowledge of Zients’ transcribed Capitol Hill interview said Biden “valued input from a wide variety of advisors and experts” but always made “the final decisions” himself.
“Jeff had full confidence in President Biden’s ability to serve as president and is proud of what President Biden accomplished during his four years in office,” that source emphasized.
Just hours before he departed the Oval Office, Biden shielded all his family members except Hunter — including former first brother James Biden — from future federal prosecution with blanket pardons.
Zients made the final call on those clemencies after Biden gave the OK, writing in a 10:31 p.m. email on Jan. 19: “I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons,” according to The New York Times.
Department of Justice senior officials and aides in the West Wing expressed confusion one day before whether sweeping sentence commutations — some of which involved violent or murderous convicts — had in fact been approved by the outgoing president, according to emails first reported by The Post.
Associate Deputy Attorney General Brad Weinsheimer wrote to members of the White House Counsel’s Office and the DOJ Pardon Attorney’s Office that he was grappling with which offenders actually qualified for clemency, given the vague wording.
“I think the language ‘offenses described to the Department of Justice’ in the warrant is highly problematic and in order to resolve its meaning appropriately, and consistent with the President’s intent, we will need a statement or direction from the President as to how to interpret the language,” Weinsheimer said in the Jan. 18 email.
White House aides also deliberated for days over who had final authority to confirm the president’s decision-making after a senior member of his team would receive some form of oral approval.
“I’m going to need email from [Deputy Assistant to the President] Rosa [Po] on original chain confirming P[resident] signs off on the specific documents when they are ready,” staff secretary Stefanie Feldman, the keeper of the autopen, wrote to five other Biden aides at 9:16 p.m. on Jan. 11.
Biden told The Times in July that he orally approved of the decision but that the presidential autopen was used to sign pardons for first family members and the commutations “because there were a lot of them.”
Another 1,500 sentences were commuted and 39 more federal prisoners pardoned for a range of offenses via the mechanical device last December after receiving the go-ahead from the president. At least 37 federal death row inmates’ sentences to life in prison were commuted as a result.
Overall, the autopen was used on 25 warrants for pardons and commutations — and just a few of those warrants dealt with roughly 5,000 prisoners.
A pardon for first son Hunter Biden on tax and gun felonies, as well as shielding from future prosecution for any possible crimes committed between Jan. 1, 2014, and Dec. 10, 2024, was the only hand-signed document of the 11th-hour clemencies, signed last December.
“I made every decision,” Biden affirmed to The Times.
However, President Trump has called the autopen clemencies “a crime,” and his Justice Department has been reviewing whether Biden aides overrode the oldest-ever president’s authority at any point.
Legal experts have argued that the autopenned signatures still have full legal force, so long as they reflected the president’s orders.
Robert Kelner, Zients’ attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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