Biden's DOJ told America he took clemency "very, very seriously."
A federal judge asked one question and never got a reply.
The internal emails are out – and they show a pardon process so chaotic that Biden's own attorneys were correcting paperwork errors for days.
The Pardon Office Got Blindsided by Its Own President
The Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney exists for one reason: to vet clemency decisions before a president signs them.
Biden bypassed it.
Internal emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Protect the Public's Trust reveal that the pardon office was left completely in the dark on Hunter Biden's December 2024 pardon.
When a DOJ public affairs official asked pardon attorney Liz Oyer whether Politico's report – that her office had been "taken by surprise" – was inaccurate, Oyer confirmed: "it's accurate."
Biden had publicly announced Hunter's pardon was full and unconditional.
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His own DOJ then sent out a formal notification describing it as granted "after completion of sentence."
Hunter had never been sentenced.
The pardon office issued a correction and apologized.
Days later, a federal court flagged that Hunter's pardon lacked authentication and hadn't come from the appropriate executive agency.
Oyer's office spent days tracking down the court clerk to fix the paperwork before writing internally on December 6: "I think this is now resolved."
This is how the most consequential act of Biden's presidency – a father pardoning his son to escape federal criminal prosecution – actually played out behind closed doors.
The January Blitz Was Even Worse
If the Hunter debacle was embarrassing, what Biden did on January 17 was a catastrophe.
Biden commuted roughly 2,490 sentences that day, announcing it as a historic act of mercy for nonviolent drug offenders.
Only 258 of those recipients had been recommended by the DOJ.
The White House included people the department had specifically rejected – while leaving out hundreds DOJ had actually approved.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia contacted the pardon office about Christopher Damon Spencer – a career crack-cocaine trafficker – asking whether Biden's commutation covered a separate 2011 conviction carrying a 235-month sentence that wasn't listed.
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Deputy pardon attorney Kira Gillespie said applying it to both cases was "the most sensible reading" – then explained in writing why she wasn't certain: "Many of the cases that were granted commutation on January 17 were not vetted through our office, and so the data we had available was not reviewed as carefully as we would ordinarily hope it to be."
That's a senior DOJ official confirming, in a federal email, that Biden mass-released criminals without anyone at Justice knowing who most of them were.
A Federal Judge Asked One Question and Got Silence
U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland reviewed more than a dozen North Dakota commutations from Biden's December 12 batch and was livid.
Two recipients had defrauded more than 60 farmers and agricultural businesses out of $11.4 million – and a bank out of another $28.5 million.
None of the commutations in his review involved what Hovland described as low-level, nonviolent drug offenders – which is what Biden had told the public he was releasing.
"None of the federal prosecutors, victims, or myself as the sentencing judge were ever contacted about these commutations beforehand – not even a telephone call," Hovland wrote, demanding an explanation and copying numerous North Dakota news organizations on the letter.
When a senior deputy forwarded it to Oyer the next morning, her response was one word: "SIGH."
The DOJ told Fox News Digital it could find no record of ever responding to the judge.
Hovland got nothing.
Nobody Knows Who Actually Built That List
Former pardon attorney Margaret Love said the OPA emails show "the names of the final clemency recipients did not come through the regular pardon process where they would have been vetted by Justice Department professionals."
"This process seems to have been secret even from the responsible staff at the Justice Department," Love added separately. "Where did the cases come from, and how were they selected? I don't know that and evidently neither did the staff in the pardon office."
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The DOJ records don't establish who built the list, who conducted vetting outside the pardon office, or how names were added and removed from the final version.
Biden's own pardon attorney has said publicly she believes the Hunter pardon "was a misuse of the pardon power."
Biden didn't ask her.
Instead, he freed drug traffickers whose records weren't reviewed, ignored a federal judge demanding answers about fraud convictions, and pardoned his own son through a process so chaotic it required days of paperwork corrections – all while telling the American people he took it "very, very seriously."
The emails say otherwise.
And nobody who built that list is explaining themselves.
Sources:
- Alec Schemmel, "Biden clemency blitz left DOJ scrambling as many commutations bypassed normal vetting, emails show," Fox News Digital, August 13, 2026.
- Margaret Love, quoted in Fox News Digital, August 13, 2026.
- Wall Street Journal, reporting on DOJ clemency recommendations vs. final Biden list, January 2025.
