The GOP claimed Biden didn’t know whom he was pardoning. Trump now admits he doesn’t know whom he’s pardoning

House Republicans issued a report last week suggesting Joe Biden wasn’t really calling the shots as president. And they argued that his presidential pardons epitomized this dynamic.

Biden appeared so disengaged from the process, the House Oversight Committee’s report claimed, that it called into question “the validity of all pardons reportedly granted” by him.

House Speaker Mike Johnson later said Biden mass-pardoned people without knowing “what the categories were apparently — much less the individual people that he pardoned.”

But President Donald Trump now says he didn’t know much about one of his own most controversial recent pardons — that of Changpeng Zhao, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

The president also emphasized that he was relying on things people around him said.

“I don’t know who he is,” Trump said in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday. He soon added that he knew “nothing about it.”

Back on October 23, Trump offered similar comments. When pressed on the pardon by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Trump didn’t seem to know who Collins was asking about, despite the pardon having been issued the very same day.

“Oh, the recent one, yes,” Trump said when Collins refreshed his memory. “I believe we’re talking about the same person, because I do pardon a lot of people.”

(In fact, Zhao was the only person Trump had pardoned that week.)

The GOP’s fixation on Biden and his use of the autopen has long strained the known facts. The argument seems to be that Biden’s actions were invalid because he supposedly wasn’t making the decisions.

But Trump keeps complicating that message by disclaiming his own role in and knowledge of major decisions — the kinds of things a president should be aware of. It’s not just pardons; he’s done it repeatedly with major foreign policy decisions.

While Trump has pardoned an extraordinary number of allies and Republicans, the Zhao pardon is on a different level because of the seeming personal conflicts of interest involved.

It’s controversial because Binance is the cryptocurrency exchange that hosts the Trump family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial. The pardon could allow it to operate in the US again. Binance has also been a significant platform for the sale of World Liberty Financial’s proprietary tokens, which have netted the Trump family hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.

In other words, Binance has helped and could help the Trump family make a lot of money, and the president pardoned someone who plays a significant role in that.

For these reasons, the pardon has earned comparisons to some of the most controversial pardons in modern history, including former President Bill Clinton’s pardon of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich after Rich’s ex-wife donated to Democrats.

But to hear Trump tell it, he made this monumental decision without really digging into the situation himself. He has repeatedly suggested he was basically doing what others urged him to do.

“I have no idea who he is,” Trump told “60 Minutes.”

“I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people — of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.”

The president added: “Well, here’s the thing: I know nothing about it because I’m too busy.”

Back on October 23 — the day of the pardon — Trump said: “I don’t know him. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him. But I’ve been told … he had a lot of support. And they said that what he did is not even a crime.”

It’s all pretty difficult to square with the GOP’s rhetoric about Biden, including last week’s House Oversight Committee report.

“The authority to grant pardons is not provided to the president’s inner circle,” the report said. “Nor can it be delegated to particular staff when a president’s competency is in question.”

The report also faulted the Biden administration for giving the Democratic president talking points to discuss his more controversial pardons. It intimated that this suggested Biden hadn’t played a major role in them.

“It is striking that President Biden needed any notecards or talking points to talk about his son[’s pardon], especially about a decision recently made about him,” the report said.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer suggested the fact that pardons were presented to Biden in memo form suggested he wasn’t involved enough.

“Some staffer would type a memo, then Joe Biden would read the memo authorizing the use of the autopen, then sign his initial and then someone used that memo,” the Kentucky Republican told CNN’s Jake Tapper last week.

Pressed Monday by CNN’s Manu Raju to account for the similarities between what the oversight report alleged about Biden and what Trump said on “60 Minutes,” Johnson demurred.

“I don’t know anything about that,” the speaker said. “I didn’t see the interview. You’d have to ask the president about that. I’m not sure.”

Comer likewise punted on Monday. He explained that Trump sometimes “says things, and we have to really analyze and give him another opportunity to make sure he didn’t misspeak, and things like that.”

Comer suggested the president might have misspoken despite Trump having said such things twice, more than a week apart.

And Trump himself has attacked Biden for allegedly knowing too little about his own pardons.

“I would say that they’re null and void, because I’m sure Biden didn’t have any idea that it was taking place,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One in March.

Trump added in a social media post the next day: “In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!”

Fast forward nearly eight months, and Trump seems to be making a similar argument about himself. Not only has he insisted he doesn’t know much about one of his most controversial pardons to date, but he also didn’t seem to have any idea what a reporter was talking about when questioned on the topic.

Despite the similarities, we probably shouldn’t hold our breath for the GOP-led House Oversight Committee to launch a similar probe into Trump.

This story has been updated with additional reaction.