"But the other point Trump made was that the autopen signatures proved Biden had no idea what he was doing, as if that were ever in dispute. Anyone who saw Biden’s June 27, 2024, debate performance is well familiar with his galloping senescence, but Trump is nothing if not thorough. More important than Biden not actually signing the pardons, Trump said, “he did not know anything about them!”
"Of all of President Trump’s zany ideas — making boring, self-righteous Canada the 51st state, we take Gaza, Perkins Coie lawyers banned from federal buildings — his claim that Joe Biden’s pardons are invalid because they were signed with an autopen is a winner.
"As discussed last week, Biden used the pardons not to show mercy to specific individuals, but to change the law. We’re told that no one may ever challenge a president’s clemencies, because the pardon power is “plenary.” But however plenary it is, it cannot be so plenary as to allow a president to eliminate the legislative and judicial branches. Biden’s blanket pardons of entire classes of crimes and punishments do just that.
"Suppose President Stephen K. Bannon pardoned, en masse, nearly all criminal violations of the Clean Water Act. Go ahead, dump pollutants into rivers, discharge chemical waste onto wetlands, funnel nuclear waste directly into clean water reservoirs. Maybe the EPA will convict you, but not before you’re pardoned.
"Next up, pardons for criminal convictions under the Clean Air Act, freeing developers to get on with it and rip asbestos from the walls of derelict buildings and manufacturers to belch toxic smoke from their factories and build two or three new coal-burning power plants every week. You know, like China!
" 'The best news? After President Bannon issues similarly sweeping clemencies to those convicted under the Endangered Species Act, I can finally open my long-dreamed-of restaurant that serves nothing but red wolf. Everything will be endangered-licious, from appetizers to Red Wolf Velvet Cake.
"Totally proper use of the pardon power, right? Why wouldn’t our founders want a president to be able to single-handedly rewrite federal law, nullifying any statutes that he doesn’t like? Why else would they have called him “the king of America”? Surely, it’s every bit as sound as Biden’s Jan. 17, 2025, proclamation that the never-ratified Equal Rights Amendment “is the law of the land.” . . .
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