US President Donald Trump says he will end former US President Joe Biden’s autopen-signed executive orders, reigniting his long-running criticism of the pardons signed by Biden at the end of his last term.
It is a move that is illegally uncertain.
Trump has often expressed outrage over Biden’s alleged use of autopen to sign pardons, executive orders and other documents, in an effort to point to Biden’s “cognitive decline”.
An autopen mechanically replicates a person’s signature.
“Every document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden using the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated and of no further force or effect,” Trump said on social media.
“I hereby cancel all Executive Orders, and anything else not signed directly by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally.”
While several autopen systems have been used by previous US presidents, including Barack Obama, Trump has said their use under Biden proved the then-president was mentally disabled and had no control over the White House.
Conservative legal commentator Ed Whelan said on social media that Trump was free to revoke executive orders regardless of whether Biden personally signed them.
“But he doesn’t have the same discretion regarding ‘anything else’ (e.g., bills passed by Congress, pardons) that Biden ordered autopen signed,” he said.
The US Department of Justice said in 2005 that the US President is not required to sign a bill by hand and can direct an official to “affix the President’s signature to such bill, for example by autopen”.
In 2011, Obama became the first American president to sign a bill in Europe via autopen.
During his final days as president, Biden pardoned people targeted by Trump, including Biden’s own son, politicians who questioned Trump, a military general who had criticized Trump and the nation’s top COVID-19 expert.
Biden was 82 when he left office, while Trump is 79 and will leave office in January 2029.
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