Trump’s New Pardon Attorney to Scrutinize Pardons Biden Issued Before Leaving Office

Ed Martin said he is ‘going to take a hard look' at the pardons.

U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr. speaks at a news conference in Washington on May 13, 2025. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo

President Donald Trump’s newly tabbed pardon attorney said on May 13 that his work will include scrutinizing pardons that President Joe Biden issued just before leaving office in January.

“I do think that the Biden pardons need some scrutiny. And they need scrutiny because we want pardons to matter and to be accepted and to be something that’s used correctly,” Ed Martin, the pardon attorney, told reporters during a press briefing in Washington.

“So I do think we’re going to take a hard look at how they went and what they did and if they’re, I don’t know, but null and void, I’m not sure how that operates.”

Biden’s pardons, issued in his final hours in office, went to multiple individuals, including former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). The pardons were for conduct for which the individuals had not been charged.

Biden said at the time that the people “do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.”

Trump declared in March that the pardons were “void” because, he alleged, they were made with an autopen, or a device that lets people sign documents with preloaded signatures.

Martin said on May 13 that the pardons were not particularly reasonable but that he did not necessarily think the use of an autopen would nullify them.

Martin is stepping down as the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia on May 14. Trump on May 8 named Martin pardon attorney and director of the Department of Justice’s weaponization working group after some senators publicly opposed Martin’s nomination to take the U.S. attorney post permanently.

Asked later on May 13 about the resignation of Denise Cheung, who had been chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia’s Criminal Division, Martin said that he had asked Cheung to look into what he described as unprecedented conduct, or $6.7 billion transferred from the government to a nonprofit that was created just six months prior.

That kind of conduct “does make you pause,” Martin said.

“That’s what you’re supposed to do, is pause, just like if the Biden pardons are unprecedented in their extent,” he said. “Right back to when Hunter Biden was whatever age you say: ‘That’s uncommon. We ought to take a look at that.'”

Biden also pardoned his son, Hunter Biden.

Martin also said that the weaponization working group has been looking at various actions taken during the Biden administration, including the prosecution of people who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol. He said that under him, the group will be giving more updates on its work and is exploring the launch of a portal that will enable people to provide tips.