President Trump’s latest weapon deployed against the legacy of former President Joe Biden is... the autopen.
You read that right.
Trump’s not actually writing anything with an autopen—he’s just claiming that the Biden’s pardons are invalid because an autopen was allegedly used to sign them. (Trump also claims that Biden didn’t even know about the pardons.)
Trump’s argument is baseless. A presidential pardon cannot be revoked because they were signed with an autopen. Actually, they can’t be revoked at all.
Trump made his case on his social media platform, Truth Social, declaring that pardons Biden gave to, “Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them 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.”
While Trump’s post lacks any specific names he does use his pet-name for the Jan 6. committee so he’s probably referencing pardons given to former members of Congress like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Further support for who he is talking about can be found in allegations first raised by the Heritage Foundation—authors of the infamous Project 2025 blue print for the Trump administration—which claimed that their investigation proved Biden used an autopen to sign pardons for not only members of the Jan 6 committee but also Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, former Democratic Party Chair Jerry Lundergan, Hunter Biden, President Biden’s brother James and his wife, federal death row inmates and people placed under house arrest during the Covid pandemic.
At least one aspect of the Heritage Foundation’s investigation seems to rest upon shaky ground.
According to reporting by Newsweek, the Heritage Foundation analyzed signatures from the National Archives in concluding that numerous documents were signed by autopen. But the National Archives displays digitized versions, not originals, which means that “copies use a computer-generated signature for where the president signed the document, meaning that online copies of Biden’s signature appear to be auto-signed, but they’re not the original version.” That alone raises questions about on what basis the Heritage Foundation concluded some signatures were done by autopen versus being signed by hand.
The autopen was patented in 1803 and an early adopter was President Thomas Jefferson – whose “gadget guy” status can be attested to by anyone who has ever visited Monticello.
Jefferson used it for correspondence copying and proclaimed it to be “the finest invention of the present age.” Numerous U.S. Presidents have used it without any legal challenges to its use although not all of them were open about its use.
During the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. Justice Department wrote a memorandum concluding that use of an autopen—or other affixing of the presidential signature by a directed subordinate—complied with Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution requiring a presidential signature to enact laws.
Nor is there any legal basis upon which to challenge the pardons based upon Trump’s (and the country writ large) obsession with Biden’s cognitive status during his Presidency.
No evidence exists to back up Trump and conservative claims that Biden was unaware of the pardons he was giving out.
Common-sense would belie that idea that he was unaware of pardoning his own son, brother and sister-in-law, and the gathering of such evidence—assuming it even exists—would be practically impossible as it would depend upon the testimony of Biden administration members retroactively claiming that they were deceiving the President.
In any event, there is no retroactive application of the 25th Amendment—that amendment covers removal of a president due to death, resignation or inability to discharge their office. By definition, that has to happened while the President is in office, not after.
The hypocrisy of Trump’s position also undercuts his assertions. An analysis by the Daily Mail concluded that Trump had used an autopen about 25 times. Following his accusations against Biden on Truth Social, Trump then admitted the same day that he uses an autopen. Trump qualified his answer by saying he only uses it for “very unimportant papers.”
When asked by NBC if he had used to sign the Continuing Resolution providing budget authority, Trump first asked who the reporter was with then said he refused to answer questions from NBC because they were such a discredited news organization.
The final nail in the coffin for Trump and the Heritage Foundation’s attacks on Biden’s pardons is the Constitution itself. Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution grants the President the “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
Notably absent from this grant of authority is any mention of a requirement that a pardon be signed. Numerous legal experts have pointed this out, including Professor Jay Wexler, professor of Constitutional law at Boston University School of Law who told NPR: “The argument that the pardon fails because it was signed by an autopen fails at the get-go, because there’s no requirement that pardon even be signed.”
While Trump’s attacks on the Biden pardons seems unlikely to get anywhere, there is a possibility that the real goal is finding a novel way to challenge Biden’s legislative accomplishments. As reported in Time, Professor Bernadette Meyler, a constitutional law scholar at Stanford Law School (who also agrees that the Constitution does not require pardons to be in writing) pointed out that “if presidential pardons were to be invalidated because of an autopen signature, that could bring questions other policies that were signed by such measures.”
Indeed, an energy watchdog group founded by an alumnus of the conservative Charles Koch institute already has asked U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into whether energy policies limiting natural gas exports signed by Biden might be invalidated if they were signed by autopen.
If this is turns into a trend, then Trump’s seemingly nonsensical attack on the use of autopens may be just the R&D stage for a new weapon to undo legislation that the Trump administration dislikes.
