President Donald Trump capped off a weekend of golf with a late-night social media rant claiming former President Joe Biden’s pardons for the members of Congress who investigated Trump’s role in the Capitol riot were “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER EFFECT.”
“Those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two-year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level,” he wrote in a Truth Social post.
In one of Biden’s final acts as president, he preemptively pardoned people whom Trump had identified during the campaign as his “enemies from within,” including members of the House committee that investigated Trump’s role in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol building.
During a weekend trip to his private Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida—which cost taxpayers about $3 million—Trump apparently became fixated on the idea that the pardons might have been signed by an autopen and therefore were not “real.”
Since Harry Truman’s time in office, presidents (including Trump) have used autopens—a machine that replicates the president’s signature—to sign documents, according to Smithsonian magazine. But earlier on Sunday, Trump pinned a meme to his Truth Social account implying the autopen had been the real president during Biden’s term.
“In other words, Joe Biden did not sign [the pardons] but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime,” Trump wrote, without providing any evidence to back up the claim.
In fact, top White House officials debated the pardons for months, both because their scope was unprecedented and because pardons typically carry a tacit admission of guilt or wrongdoing, the AP reported at the time.
“These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing,” Biden said in a Jan. 20 statement announcing the pardons. “Even when individuals have done nothing wrong—and in fact have done the right thing—and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.”
At the time, House committee leaders Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said they were grateful for the pardons, and that they were being pardoned “not for breaking the law but for upholding it,” according to the AP.
The committee’s final report found that the Capitol riot—which aimed to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory—was part of a criminal “multi-part conspiracy” on Trump’s part.
A federal grand jury indicted Trump for his role in the attacks, but special counsel Jack Smith was forced to drop the case when Trump won re-election in November. (The Department of Justice has a standing policy not to prosecute sitting presidents.)
For Trump, it wasn’t enough to avoid prosecution; he has repeatedly threatened anyone involved in the investigations and called them “political thugs.”
But back to the autopen. Unfortunately for Trump, late-night speculation on social media is not a legal basis for overturning a presidential pardon.
In fact, the Supreme Court has held that the president’s power to grant pardons for federal crimes is basically “unlimited,” and neither Congress nor the courts have the power to review the pardons, according to SCOTUSblog.
The only exception would be in the case of impeachment, or if the person receiving the pardon decided not to accept it.
