Donald Trump claimed on Monday, without offering evidence, that pardons signed by Joe Biden were “void, vacant and of no further force and effect” because they were signed with an autopen.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an autopen as “a device that mechanically reproduces a person’s signature”.
Trump made his claim in a post to his social media platform that used his abusive nicknames for Biden and members of the House January 6 committee, writing: “The ‘Pardons; that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the 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!”
Close aides to Trump have said he often does not write his own Truth Social posts. They have also said his authorship can be detected by factors including the free use of capital letters.
Trump made the same autopen claim on board Air Force One on Sunday, telling reporters: “It’s not my decision – that’ll be up to a court – but I would say that they’re null and void, because I’m sure Biden didn’t have any idea that it was taking place, and somebody was using an autopen to sign off and to give pardons.”
The claim came after the Heritage Foundation, a pro-Trump rightwing thinktank, released a report into Biden’s autopen use, claiming “whoever controlled the autopen controlled the presidency”. The fact-checking website Snopes debunked the claim, noting in a lengthy article various ways presidential signatures are affixed to documents, commonly including the use of a sample signature which a National Archives spokesperson said officials “use to create the graphic image for all presidential documents published in the Federal Register”.
Smithsonian Magazine has described how presidents since Thomas Jefferson have used devices to help them sign documents with greater efficiency. Jefferson, the third president from 1801 to 1809, used a polygraph, a device he found so useful he said he “could not live without it”.
According to the Smithsonian, “Harry Truman was the first president to use” an actual autopen, in the years after the second world war, “and [John F] Kennedy allegedly made substantial use of the device. However, the White House autopen was a closely guarded secret until Gerald Ford’s administration publicly acknowledged its use”.
In 2011, Barack Obama faced controversy when he signed an extension of the Patriot Act, contentious national security legislation, with an autopen. In 2013, Obama memorably used an autopen to sign a congressional bill heading off financial disaster, while on vacation in Hawaii.
According to Snopes, it is “unclear whether Trump has signed legislation or policy with an autopen, although some reports suggest he signed campaign items for sale via the device”.
Furthermore, court precedents suggest Trump was wrong to say a president must personally sign any pardon, reprieve or other act of clemency.
In 1929, the US justice department held that “it is wholly for the president to decide” the method by which a pardon is handed down. Last year, a federal appeals court said presidential pardons do not even have to be in writing.
On 20 January, his last day in office, Biden gave pre-emptive pardons to family members and all members of the House committee that investigated the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, which Trump incited in his attempt to overturn his defeat by Biden in the 2020 election.
Two Republican Trump opponents, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, sat on the committee. Both have since left Congress.
In his social media post, Trump wrote, again without providing evidence: “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.”
Repeating unsubstantiated rightwing claims about the committee’s treatment of records, he continued: “Therefore, 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.”
Members of the January 6 committee said they did not want pardons from Biden, stressing they did nothing wrong.
On Monday, Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chaired the committee, told Axios: “I am not afraid of Trump’s latest midnight rant that has no basis in reality.”
Kinzinger wrote: “Please! You guys have been threatening this forever! Bring it on, it’s getting boring waiting.”
Nonetheless, fear of revenge investigations and prosecutions remains high, particularly as Trump’s administration targets government lawyers who investigated him in his two federal criminal cases and outside lawyers with links to Democrats.
Other recipients of pre-emptive pardons from Biden included Anthony Fauci, the public health adviser who rose to prominence under Covid, and Mark Milley, a retired general and chair of the joint chiefs of staff who has called Trump “a fascist to the core” and said he fears revenge.
