President Donald Trump promised to do away with all documents former President Joe Biden signed with an autopen, but doing so would be a taxing and legally questionable effort.
Trump declared in a TruthSocial post last week that all documents signed by Biden with the use of autopen are null and void, claiming Biden used the tool for roughly 92% of his signatures. But the reality of voiding four years of all Biden documents signed by autopen is more challenging than posting on social media.
The White House gave no further insight into Trump’s plans when asked and referred Bloomberg Government back to his initial post regarding updates on targeting Biden documents signed by autopen. However, Trump repeated his plan Tuesday night, running through the types of directives he has in his sights.
“Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts, signed by Order of the now infamous and unauthorized ‘AUTOPEN,’ within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Anyone receiving ‘Pardons,’ ‘Commutations,’ or any other Legal Document so signed, please be advised that said Document has been fully and completely terminated, and is of no Legal effect.”
Trump accused White House staffers of working behind Biden’s back and using the autopen illegally to enact policy from the Oval Office. He also threatened perjury charges against Biden if he claimed he was involved in directing the use of the autopen to sign official documents.
Legal Doubts
Legal analysts are skeptical Trump can issue a sweeping void of Biden-era policies and directives.
Richard Meagher, a political science professor at Randolph-Macon College, called such a move by Trump “unprecedented.”
Meagher said while executive orders are easy to reverse, canceling all documents signed by Biden would include more complex issuances, such as pardons or legislation passed by Congress.
“It gets a little more complicated,” Meagher said. “As far as I know, there’s no constitutional mechanism for unpardoning a pardon.”
Trump has already rescinded dozens of Biden’s executive orders. The former president signed 162 executive orders while he was in office, according to the American Presidency Project.
Among those orders, Trump reversed almost 70 shortly after he was sworn into office and later rescinded another 14.
Autopen attacks
Trump has weaponized Biden’s use of the autopen as a way to make a case that his predecessor wasn’t mentally fit to be president.
The president attacked Biden’s autopen use several times, suggesting the issue was “one of the biggest scandals” in the last century of American politics.
Trump accused Biden of using the autopen to sign pardons for some of the president’s political rivals, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and members of the Jan. 6 Committee, which investigated the 2021 Capitol riot.
Last week’s sweeping threat wasn’t the first time Trump has promised to nullify Biden’s actions. In March, Trump declared Biden’s pardons “void,” but he never followed up with any kind of action.
Back in September, Trump also replaced Biden’s portrait on the White House’s presidential “Walk of Fame” with a photo of an autopen.
Republicans have backed up Trump’s attacks.
The House Oversight Committee released a staff report earlier this year corroborating Trump’s claims about Biden’s use of the autopen and accusing his political aides of using the tool without the president’s consent.
The Trump-friendly Heritage Foundation also unveiled a comprehensive report on Biden’s autopen use, claiming roughly 88% of more than 1,500 documents that included the former president’s signature were signed with an autopen. That report claimed the use of the autopen heightened as Biden’s “cognitive abilities declined.”
Autopens have been used by several previous presidential administrations and have historically been noncontroversial. An early version of the tool can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson and has been used by several other presidents in modern history.
Trump himself has used an autopen, although he says he has done so “only for very unimportant papers” such as letters.
Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, said Trump is invoking Biden to distract from some of his recent setbacks in office, as well as slipping approval numbers.
“Donald Trump feels the best way to help his horrible political situation is to beat up on Joe Biden,” Bannon said. “This is classic inside baseball that Americans don’t care about.”
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