On March 7, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — on his second day in office – sent a written notice of termination to Liz Oyer, Pardon Attorney in the Department of Justice. The Pardon Attorney is a “career” position in that it is not an office that requires a presidential appointment that is confirmed by the Senate. The Pardon Attorney is appointed by the Attorney General, but the position is in the “Senior Executive Service.” These are the top management positions just below the presidential appointees in all federal agencies.
Oyer posted the written notice she was given on her LinkedIn page. It reads in part: “This memorandum serves as official notice that you are removed from your Senior Executive Service (SES) position of Pardon Attorney, Office of the Pardon Attorney, and from federal service, effectively immediately.”
The Office of the Pardon Attorney serves mostly in an “advisory” role. It receives pardon applications from current federal inmates as well as those who have already served their sentences. The Pardon Attorney investigates the circumstances of each case and forwards a recommendation to the president as to whether a pardon or other form of clemency, such as a sentence commutation, should be considered. Part of this process involves consulting with the prosecutorial entity that handled the case – sometimes, there is information about the defendant in the case file that is not necessarily in the court records.
Liz Oyer was appointed as the Pardon Attorney by Merrick Garland in 2022. Oyer was not a long-time DOJ career employee – she spent most of her career as an assistant federal defender in the District of Maryland. Prior to that, she was a partner in the firm Mayer Brown in D.C., so she is a veteran of Big Law, having gone to Georgetown as an undergrad and Harvard Law School.
But there was a noteworthy aspect of her dismissal that was reported by the Wall Street Journal the day after her firing – she was immediately escorted from the building by security.
This is done when there is an ongoing investigation that the individual is likely unaware of, and those conducting the investigation want to preserve all electronic records that might be available on a computer and cell phone. Asking her to leave immediately prevents any attempt to delete such records.
As readers will recall, over the course of the final month of the Biden administration, there were several controversial episodes involving the granting of pardons and/or clemency by Joe Biden. He gave a pardon to his son Hunter that covered any criminal activity over a 10-year (plus) period going back to 2014. He commuted the death sentences of all federal inmates on “Death Row” — except for three. He granted pardons/clemency in approximately 2,500 cases, including Leonard Peltier, convicted for the 1975 murder of two FBI Agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
But what might be of most interest to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche are the “preemptive” pardons Biden issued on his last day in office, given to other Biden family members, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Ret. Gen. Mark Milley, and the House members and staff who served on the January 6 Special Committee. President Trump had stated an intention during the campaign to look into the allegations of influence peddling by members of Biden’s family, some of whom had testified before the House Oversight Committee examining the foreign sources of income received by the family during his two terms as vice president.
Normally, the issuance of a presidential pardon is a “non-justiciable” act. The power to issue pardons rests exclusively with the executive branch as set forth in the Constitution, Article II, Sec. 2, Clause 1. It is “non-justiciable” in the sense that Article III courts do not have jurisdiction to review a grant of a presidential pardon or another form of clemency, so there is no clear avenue through which to challenge the validity of a pardon.
But two issues have now arisen that might provide a basis for an inquiry even though there remains uncertainty as to whether there are any avenues available to seek a remedy.
The first is the now well-publicized cognitive decline and onset of dementia that was evident in Biden’s public appearances for more than two years. This is reflected in the exchange recounted by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), who recently described a conversation with Biden over the suspension of approvals for liquid natural gas exports to other countries around the world. When the subject was raised, Biden said to Johnson that he never suspended those exports even though he clearly did so – as announced by the White House – in January 2024. This raised the issue of whether Biden was aware of what others in the administration were doing in his name.
The second issue that has arisen is an ongoing analysis of the use of an “autopen” to sign official documents with a reproduction of Biden’s signature. Use of an autopen is not controversial. It would be a physical impossibility for a president to sign every piece of paper that requires a presidential signature.
But autopen signatures are easy to detect under examination. The primary indicator is that with autopen signatures, the writing instrument never leaves contact with the paper – except it does so very cleanly between the two names. Further, there is no variation between autopen signatures as they are produced with finely calibrated computer-controlled movements of the writing instrument.
The combination of these two factors leads to the question of whether a presidential pardon bearing an autopen signature is valid if Biden was unaware such pardons were being issued in his name. Is the power to issue pardons something that can be delegated by a president if it is exercised without his actual knowledge as to how that delegated power was used?
The records of the Office of the Pardon Attorney could produce relevant evidence on at least two key issues – were any of the controversial pardons issued in the waning hours of the Biden administration the subject of any review or recommendation by the Pardon Attorney? If not, that increases the likelihood that officials in the White House exercised the authority by going around the process for review and recommendations that were in place. The question as to why they would do that then becomes relevant to possible criminal intent – to hide what they were doing.
The second issue would arise from any evidence of communications between the White House and the Pardon Attorney regarding the more controversial pardons. This would be particularly true regarding the “preemptive” pardons given to individuals for the purpose of impeding any efforts by the incoming Trump administration to investigate those individuals – including the decision-making behind the investigations of Trump himself as part of the “lawfare” waged against him since the summer of 2016.
To the extent there were discussions that could be characterized as being in preparation to corrupt the pardon process for the benefit of select insiders who were already mentioned as possible targets of the incoming administration, could such actions fall within the scope of various “obstruction of justice” statutes? That would be a basis to open a grand jury investigation and begin gathering evidence with the tools that would provide. This investigation wouldn’t be about the pardons and the people who received them, as it would be about the process by which they were issued.
There is almost no doubt that the Trump DOJ is going to explore these issues and the question of whether any avenues of investigation remain open to them, notwithstanding the pardons. They may also test the pardons themselves by alleging they were invalidly issued if there is evidence that White House aides acted on their own initiative and Biden was unaware.
The firing of the Pardon Attorney by Dep. AG Blanche on his second day in office, and the fact that she was escorted from the building leads me to suspect that he is going to be actively involved. It may well be that his Principal Associate, Emil Bove, will personally supervise such an investigation. Both are former federal prosecutors with extensive criminal prosecution experience.
This is an issue to keep an eye on.
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