Trump: Biden’s Autopen Pardons Legally Void

Last week the Oversight Project, which is part of the Heritage Foundation, published a report exposing that Joe Biden used an autopen signature for almost every single document they could find. "WHOEVER CONTROLLED THE AUTOPEN CONTROLLED THE PRESIDENCY," the Oversight Project wrote on X.

It further called into question who was really running the show during the Biden presidency, and Donald Trump is seizing on the scandal to rightly call into question if Biden’s “signature” is even valid if it’s not really his. While this may be acceptable on Docusign, it’s questionable whether it is for the presidency. 

Late yesterday Trump declared all of  Biden’s pardons signed by autopen to be legally void:



HotAir’s Ed Morrissey dug through prior cases to see if there’s any precedent for revoking pardons, and found that 

One precedent exists for a president revoking pardons issued by a different president. When Ulysses S. Grant first took office, he revoked three pardons Andrew Johnson had issued in his final hours as president. In those days, though, pardons were not official until delivered to and accepted by the pardoned. 

As Morrissey notes in the Grant example, “That doesn't apply today; pardons are considered instantly active on signature,” so it all really does just come down to whether or not the signatures themselves are valid. 

Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros