Newly obtained internal Justice Department emails are pulling back the curtain on former President Joe Biden’s massive, last-minute clemency blitz — revealing confusion inside the DOJ and an admission that many of the cases were never vetted through the department’s traditional pardon office.

The records show Justice Department officials scrambling to determine exactly what some of Biden’s commutations covered, while also dealing with an erroneous notice involving the pardon of the president’s own son, Hunter Biden.

The emails were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust and provided to Fox News Digital.

And one admission buried in the correspondence could raise serious new questions about how Biden’s extraordinary wave of clemency decisions was handled.

“Many of the cases that were granted commutation on January 17 were not vetted through our office,” Deputy Pardon Attorney Kira Gillespie wrote.

That office — the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney — traditionally plays a central advisory and review role in presidential clemency cases.

Yet Biden was issuing clemency on a massive scale as his presidency came to an end.

Biden Commutes Nearly 2,500 Sentences At Once

On Jan. 17, 2025, Biden announced that he was commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses.

Federal records ultimately showed the action covered 2,490 people.

Biden said the sweeping move was aimed primarily at prisoners serving sentences significantly longer than they might receive under modern federal sentencing laws, including people affected by the old sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses.

But behind the scenes, DOJ officials apparently didn’t have all the answers.

Internal correspondence shows department personnel were soon trying to determine precisely which sentences Biden had actually commuted.

One case involved Christopher Damon Spencer.

Spencer’s name appeared on Biden’s clemency list in connection with a 2003 criminal case.

But he also had a separate 2011 case carrying a 235-month federal prison sentence.

Prosecutors wanted to know whether Biden’s clemency action applied to that sentence too.

Deputy Pardon Attorney Gillespie responded that applying the commutation to both cases appeared to be the “most sensible reading” of Biden’s action.

Then came the stunning admission.

“Many of the cases that were granted commutation on January 17 were not vetted through our office,” Gillespie wrote.

According to the records, she also indicated that the information available had not undergone the level of review her office would ordinarily seek.

‘Grand Canyon Gap’

Critics seized on the emails as evidence that Biden’s final clemency operation looked considerably different behind closed doors than it did publicly.

“The process didn’t match the public sales pitch,” former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told Fox News Digital.

“There is a Grand Canyon gap between the public description and the internal reality,” Miyares said.

Protect the Public’s Trust communications director Alexa Moutevelis was even more pointed.

“This paints a troubling picture of a pardon process driven by politics and haste rather than the careful deliberation such extraordinary acts of executive clemency demand,” Moutevelis said.

And according to Moutevelis, the confusion wasn’t limited to obscure cases buried among thousands of names.

It reached all the way to Hunter Biden.

“The Justice Department pardon office’s own emails show the final Biden auto-pen blitz was so clumsy and rushed that the chaos extended even to the most high-profile and controversial of all: his own son, Hunter,” Moutevelis told Fox.

The records cited in the report include officials correcting an erroneous notice connected to Hunter Biden’s pardon.

Autopen Controversy Adds Another Layer

The newly released emails arrive amid a separate controversy surrounding the Biden White House’s use of an autopen.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of some of Biden’s final pardons, arguing that an autopen was used and questioning whether Biden personally authorized the actions.

Among Biden’s final acts were pardons for members of the January 6 select committee, including former Rep. Liz Cheney.

Trump has alleged those pardons may have been signed using an autopen without Biden’s knowledge.

Those claims remain disputed, and the records described here do not establish that Biden was unaware of the pardons.

But another Trump administration official has made an even more explosive allegation.

Trump AI advisor David Sacks previously claimed that Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren was behind the Biden administration’s use of the autopen.

“Elizabeth Warren controlled the autopen during that administration,” said the Trump advisor, adding that the Massachusetts senator has a “pathological hatred of the crypto community” and wanted to “drive this community offshore.”

Sacks did not provide evidence in the cited interview establishing that Warren actually controlled Biden’s autopen.

Emails Raise New Questions About Biden’s Final Days

Presidents possess extraordinarily broad constitutional authority to grant federal pardons and commutations.

The controversy here is instead about how Biden’s unprecedented wave of clemency decisions was processed and reviewed inside the administration.

And on that question, the internal emails provide a striking glimpse behind the curtain.

DOJ personnel were seeking clarification about individual sentences.

An erroneous notice involving Hunter Biden had to be corrected.

And a senior official inside the Pardon Attorney’s office acknowledged that many of the Jan. 17 commutations had never been vetted through her office at all.

That doesn’t establish that the clemency grants themselves were invalid.

The Trump administration says it has uncovered a staggering fraud problem buried inside Obamacare — and the numbers could reignite the battle over the controversial healthcare law.

According to administration officials, roughly $10 billion in taxpayer money was improperly paid out between 2021 and 2024 as enrollment safeguards were weakened under former President Joe Biden.

But the alleged scale of the problem goes far beyond the dollar figure.

A Department of Health and Human Services report says officials have already removed nearly three million fraudulent or improper Obamacare enrollments — while another 2.6 million questionable enrollments remain.

And more than one million of those remaining enrollments allegedly don’t even have a Social Security number attached to them.

The administration says what it uncovered includes improper subsidies, questionable eligibility and so-called “phantom enrollments” — cases in which insurance brokers allegedly signed people up for Obamacare plans without their knowledge.

Obamacare Enrollment Exploded Under Biden

The report traces the problem back to changes implemented during the Biden administration that expanded opportunities to enroll while relaxing certain income verification and eligibility safeguards.

The numbers surged.

At the beginning of Biden’s presidency, Affordable Care Act exchanges covered approximately 10 million people.

By 2024, that figure had ballooned to roughly 22 million.

Federal investigators now believe millions of those enrollments were improper, fraudulent or, in some cases, allegedly created without the knowledge of the people supposedly receiving the coverage.

“By our estimate, improper, phantom, and fraudulent enrollment peaked at 5.6 million people in 2025,” the report states.

“We estimate 2.6 million improper and phantom enrollments remain, including over 1 million enrollments without a Social Security number.”

Those figures are now putting a massive spotlight on what happened as Obamacare enrollment soared.

‘Phantom Enrollments’ Put Brokers Under Scrutiny

The report describes multiple ways the system was allegedly exploited.

Some applicants allegedly understated their income to qualify for larger taxpayer-funded subsidies.

Others allegedly received premium assistance despite failing to meet eligibility requirements.

But perhaps the most startling allegation involves people who may not have known they were enrolled at all.

Investigators identified what they call “phantom enrollments,” in which insurance brokers allegedly enrolled unsuspecting individuals into Obamacare plans to collect federal commissions.

The report argues that reduced verification requirements made that abuse substantially easier.

The Trump administration says it has responded by tightening the system — restoring stricter income verification requirements, ending several special enrollment periods, increasing screening for duplicate Medicaid enrollment and launching investigations into brokers suspected of creating phantom policies.

Oversight of agents participating in the federal marketplace has also been strengthened.

The result, according to the administration: nearly three million enrollments have already been removed.

Trump Admin: This Is About Protecting Taxpayers

Despite the enormous purge, approximately 19.2 million people remain covered through Affordable Care Act exchanges.

Administration officials insist the goal isn’t to strip legitimate Americans of health insurance.

They say it’s about stopping taxpayer money from flowing to people who don’t qualify — or to policies allegedly created without the supposed enrollee’s knowledge.

“Preserving the fiscal and programmatic integrity of the ACA Exchanges is key to safeguarding taxpayer-funded resources for those that truly need them,” the report states.

Then came an even sharper line:

“The federal government paying brokers to enroll individuals without their knowledge is not.”

The administration says enforcement isn’t finished.

“The Trump Administration continues to aggressively root out fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption by promulgating new regulations to improve program integrity, investigating suspected improper or fraudulent enrollment, and taking action against agents and brokers committing fraud.”

Another estimated 2.6 million enrollments remain under review as investigators continue auditing the federal exchanges.

Could This Reignite The Obamacare War?

The findings could hand Republicans fresh ammunition in a political fight that has raged for more than a decade.

Supporters of tougher enforcement argue the report shows exactly why strict eligibility verification is necessary — both to protect taxpayers and preserve healthcare subsidies for Americans who legitimately qualify.

Supporters of the Biden-era policies have argued that expanded enrollment measures made healthcare more accessible to eligible Americans.

But the Trump administration’s findings now raise a far more explosive question:

How did millions of allegedly improper, fraudulent or “phantom” enrollments make it into the system in the first place?

Trump has spent more than a decade pushing to replace Obamacare.

Now, with his administration alleging billions of dollars in improper taxpayer-funded payments and millions of questionable enrollments, Republicans could have a powerful new reason to put the Affordable Care Act back at the center of the national political fight.

Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney is taking his fight all the way to President Donald Trump — with an extraordinary public plea following the dramatic mistrial in her triple-murder case.

There’s just one enormous problem:

Trump doesn’t have the constitutional power to do what he’s asking.

Attorney Kevin Reddington publicly called on Trump to consider pardoning Clancy, the Massachusetts mother charged with killing her three young children, despite the fact that presidents cannot pardon defendants for state crimes.

The remarkable appeal came just days after Trump himself weighed in on the nationally watched case, saying Clancy would ultimately face “a price” through prison, a mental institution or another legal outcome.

Now Reddington is asking the president to look at Clancy’s background and history of severe mental-health problems before Massachusetts prosecutors decide whether to put her through another trial.

“Mr. President, I would hope that you would consider this young lady, the type of person she is, what she has been through, and consider a pardon,” Reddington said during a television interview Tuesday.

There’s One Major Constitutional Problem

The request immediately runs headfirst into the Constitution.

Article II gives the president power to grant pardons only for “Offenses against the United States.”

In other words: federal crimes.

Clancy’s case is being prosecuted entirely under Massachusetts state law.

That means Trump cannot pardon Clancy, dismiss her charges or otherwise use presidential clemency powers to end the prosecution.

The Justice Department has similarly made clear that presidential clemency does not extend to state convictions. Relief from state criminal charges must come through the appropriate state process.

Reddington has acknowledged that legal reality.

But he appears to be looking for something else from Trump: influence.

The defense attorney has suggested the president could still use his enormous public platform to weigh in as Clancy’s attorneys push prosecutors toward another resolution rather than a second trial.

Three Children Dead, One Question Divided The Jury

Clancy, 36, is charged in the January 2023 deaths of her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, just 8 months old — inside the family’s Duxbury home.

Her attorneys do not dispute that Clancy killed the children.

The explosive question at trial was whether she was criminally responsible when she did it.

Her defense argued that Clancy was suffering from severe mental illness, including postpartum psychosis, and therefore could not be held legally responsible for her actions.

Prosecutors fiercely disagreed.

They argued that Clancy understood what she was doing and deliberately carried out the killings, pointing to evidence they said demonstrated planning and awareness.

After a grueling six-week trial, jurors spent approximately 38 hours deliberating.

They couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict.

Defense attorneys have said the final split was 11-1 in favor of finding Clancy not criminally responsible, though the individual jurors had not all publicly confirmed their votes.

The deadlock forced a mistrial.

And that means this case is far from over.

Prosecutors Could Put Clancy On Trial Again

A mistrial is neither an acquittal nor a conviction.

Massachusetts prosecutors remain free to try Clancy again.

Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz has not announced whether his office will pursue another trial, negotiate a resolution with Clancy’s attorneys or take another path.

Reddington has made clear what he wants.

He is urging prosecutors to avoid another lengthy trial and instead reach an agreement with the defense.

But there’s another line he says he won’t cross.

Reddington has said he would oppose any agreement requiring Clancy to serve prison time, arguing that she belongs in psychiatric treatment rather than behind bars.

The defense attorney has continued pointing to messages, medical treatment and Clancy’s attempts to seek help before the killings as evidence that she was suffering from serious psychiatric problems.

Prosecutors have countered that other evidence demonstrated planning and awareness inconsistent with the defense’s claim that Clancy lacked criminal responsibility.

Then Trump Entered The Picture

The already explosive case took another turn when Trump publicly weighed in following the mistrial.

The president called the deaths a “horrible tragedy” and indicated that he expected the legal process to continue.

Days later, Clancy’s attorney went on television and appealed directly to Trump.

It is a stunning development in a case that has already captivated the country.

But regardless of how Trump responds, the constitutional reality remains unchanged.

Donald Trump cannot pardon Lindsay Clancy for Massachusetts state charges.

Any decision about retrying Clancy remains in the hands of Massachusetts prosecutors, while any potential state clemency would have to come through Massachusetts — not the White House.

Clancy is scheduled to return to court on September 29, when attorneys are expected to discuss what comes next.

Until then, Reddington’s remarkable appeal to Trump could dramatically increase the political and public pressure surrounding the case.

But it cannot give the president a pardon power the Constitution simply does not provide.