Biden clemency emails show DOJ scrambling

Hunter Biden’s pardon created its own administrative mess. The pardon office told prosecutors that the Dec. 1 pardon had not gone through an application to the office. Oyer later confirmed internally that her office had been caught off guard. When a DOJ public-affairs official asked whether a planned report saying the office had been surprised was inaccurate, Oyer replied that the characterization was accurate. On Dec. 2, Senior Deputy Pardon Attorney Rosalind Sargent-Burns said an earlier notice had mistakenly described Hunter Biden as getting the pardon after finishing his sentence, and she apologized for the mistake. Days later, prosecutors in the federal court handling his California case had to ask the pardon office to verify the document because it had not been authenticated by the proper executive agency.

Oyer, who led the Office of the Pardon Attorney under Biden, has said presidents have relied on the office for more than 130 years for neutral advice and expertise. A representative for Oyer said she believes the pardon of Hunter Biden was a misuse of the pardon power. DOJ, meanwhile, said the commutations issued on Dec. 12 involved roughly 1,500 people identified by the Bureau of Prisons and the department as serving sentences on home confinement during COVID under the CARES Act. The department said those individuals had previously been assessed by the Bureau of Prisons before home confinement, but clemency officials did not separately review most recipients’ offenses or case histories before the grants.

The dispute reflects a deeper question about how much of the clemency process should run through the Justice Department and how much can be handled directly by the White House. DOJ said presidents of both parties have used their constitutional clemency power without consulting the department, and its regulations do not require the traditional pardon-office process. Still, former Pardon Attorney Margaret Love said the Jan. 17 emails showed a major break from the regular system and said it was unprecedented in her experience for any president other than Donald Trump, who also did not use the ordinary process.

That debate matters because clemency is one of the last broad powers of the presidency, and Americans have a stake in whether it is used carefully, transparently and with proper checks. The Biden clemency emails suggest the final decisions may have moved faster than the department could track, raising new questions about how these cases were selected and reviewed. What comes next is likely more scrutiny of the process itself, especially how the final lists were assembled and whether the Justice Department was given enough information to do its job.