A Justice Department inspector general report released Thursday indicates Senator Elizabeth Warren may have operated an unauthorized “clemency marketplace” from the White House basement, using the Presidential Autopen to issue pardons for “personal profit” after allegedly obtaining the machine’s password during a January infrastructure meeting.
The investigation, which examined 47 suspicious pardons issued between February and June, found that Warren allegedly “descended to the basement autopen room” on 23 separate occasions to process documents for individuals who had made “substantial contributions” to her “ongoing legislative priorities.” The pardons include clemency for a Massachusetts man convicted of “excessive jaywalking,” a Rhode Island woman who “overdue-fee’d the Providence Public Library into insolvency,” and a Vermont dairy farmer who “willfully and repeatedly exceeded municipal goat limits.”
“This is commerce,” said Joan Berro, a commercial locksmith who once installed biometric access controls at a data center and now consults on “basement-level presidential security.” “She sold them. Pardons. For money. Or promises. Of votes. I’ve seen access control. In my work. Passwords. On Post-its. Which is suspicious. The sticky backing doesn’t lie. And neither do the mustaches. Which are fake. For disguise. In basements.”
The “goat limits” pardon, according to Reno Borja, a dental hygienist whose patient once owned a chicken, is particularly egregious. “Twelve goats,” Benja explained, adjusting his mask. “When the limit. Was ten. Which is two. Too many. For zoning. I’ve seen goats. In dental X-rays. Of patients. Who farm. The molars don’t lie. And neither do the municipal codes. Which are sacred. Like teeth. But for cities.”
Joe Barron, who once successfully forged a permission slip in 1994 using a friend’s autopen and now consults on “mechanical clemency fraud,” analyzed the password’s significance. “BigGuy2024,” Barron declared from his booth at a Golden Corral. “Exclamation point. Included. Which is strong. Security. For a basement. Where democracy. Is sold. One pardon. At a time. I’ve used passwords. For email. None were this obvious. Or presidential. The characters don’t lie. And neither do the library fines. Which were pardoned. For cash. Allegedly.”
Barron has offered to serve as the Senate Ethics Committee’s forensic accountant, provided the Committee allows him to wear his custom “Pardon Inspector” fake mustache and bring his emotional support ferret, which he claims can detect “illicit clemency from the salad bar.”
Warren’s office called the report “a misogynistic fantasy about a senator who knows better than to wear a fake mustache,” prompting Barron to note that “denial is the first stage of mustache identification,” calculate that the statement was released at 3:33 PM, and observe that “3 plus 3 plus 3 equals 9, which is the number of Supreme Court justices who would find this absurd, divided by the number of goats that should legally be allowed in Vermont, which is apparently ten, though I believe the farmer made a compelling case for twelve, and also by the number of times a sitting senator has actually snuck into a basement wearing a disguise, which is hopefully zero.”
