United States President Donald Trump has claimed that some of Joe Biden’s pardons are invalid because the former president allegedly used an autopen.
“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,” Trump wrote on March 17 on Truth Social. He referred to Biden’s pardons of congressional members who served on the committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.
It’s uncertain whether Biden used an “autopen” – a mechanical device that uses a robotic arm with a pen attached – to sign the pardons. Yet, Trump also claimed that Biden “did not sign” the pardons and “did not know anything about them!”
Trump’s post followed his statements days earlier criticising Biden’s use of the autopen.
“Everything was signed by autopen – almost everything,” Trump said on March 13. “Nobody has ever heard of such a thing.”
Biden is not the first US president to use an autopen. Presidents Barack Obama, John F Kennedy and Thomas Jefferson used autopens or mechanised signing devices.
We found universal agreement among legal scholars that the Constitution doesn’t require a pardon’s direct human signing, and subsequent judicial decisions and legal memorandums support an autopen’s use for similar purposes. Legal scholars also agree that there is no constitutional mechanism to overturn pardons once granted.
A White House press office spokesperson referred PolitiFact to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s March 17 comments, which were in response to a reporter asking whether White House lawyers had told Trump he has the legal authority to reverse Biden’s pardons because of the autopen.
Leavitt did not directly answer that question but said, “The president was raising the point that, did the president even know about these pardons? Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge?”
When we asked the White House whether Trump ever used an autopen, a spokesperson pointed to Trump’s comments to reporters the previous night on Air Force One. “I never use it. I mean, we may use it, as an example, to send some young person a letter, because it’s nice. … But to sign pardons and all of the things that he signed with an autopen is disgraceful.”
Constitution does not address pardon document methodology
The pardon portion of the Constitution’s Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 says the president has the power to grant pardons but makes no mention of “sign” or “signature.” More than a half-dozen constitutional law experts told PolitiFact they see no restriction in the Constitution on the use of an autopen.
“The president possesses the power to pardon, but there is no specification (unlike for signing of bills) that this pardon be in writing,” said Bernadette Meyler, a Stanford University scholar of British and American constitutional law. “Hence it is not clear that a signature would even be required, as the decision to pardon could be oral rather than written.”
By comparison, Article I, Section 7 says that bills that pass the House and Senate shall be “presented to the President of the United States; If he approves he shall sign it.”
Frank O Bowman III, a University of Missouri law professor, pointed to images of pardons from Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, which sometimes do not match each other, nor Lincoln’s documented signature elsewhere.
That’s because “in the 1800s, the secretary of state, or one of his functionaries, often prepared and signed pardon warrants in the name of the president,” Bowman said.
In 2005, during George W Bush’s presidency, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote a memo to the president’s counsel about the legality of using an autopen to sign bills. The department concluded:
“The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.”
The Justice Department memo also said there are practical reasons for a president to use an autopen, such as when he is away from Washington, DC, or wants a law to take effect immediately, for example, to avert a government shutdown.
“The DOJ opinion does give Biden cover here,” Michigan State University law professor Brian Kalt said.
A 1929 Office of the Solicitor General memo, within the Justice Department, said a pardoned man should be given a “token” to show he was pardoned, however, “that need not have the president’s autograph. If it shall bear the facsimile signature and be certified by an official having charge of the records as having been issued by the President, or by his direction, that shall be sufficient.”
More recently, the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said in a 2024 ruling that “nothing in the Constitution restricts the President’s exercise of the clemency power to commutations that have been rendered through a documented writing”.
Trump can’t reverse Biden’s pardons
Legal experts agreed that nothing in the Constitution or the law permits pardons to be reversed.
“Pardons are final and irrevocable,” Kalt said.
In an 1869 ruling, a federal court wrote: “The law undoubtedly is, that when a pardon is complete, there is no power to revoke it, any more than there is power to revoke any other completed act.”
Making the argument that pardons can be reversed is a risk for Trump himself.
“Even under Trump’s conception of unlimited presidential power, a future president could undo anything he did – and I assume he would not be happy with that,” said Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor.
Trump issued pardons for the January 6, 2021, defendants.
“Presidents historically have not personally signed grants of pardons for every individual they granted clemency to,” notably when granted in large batches such as mass amnesties following wars, said Dan Kobil, a Capital Law School professor.
Claims started with Heritage Foundation entity
Trump’s autopen claims followed posts earlier in March by the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.
“WHOEVER CONTROLLED THE AUTOPEN CONTROLLED THE PRESIDENCY,” the Oversight Project wrote on March 6 on X.
The Oversight Project wrote that it gathered documents with Biden’s presidential signature and found “all used the same autopen signature” except for his announcement that he was dropping out of the 2024 race.
The Oversight Project posted about autopens about a dozen times in a week, dubbing it the “autopen scandal.” One post displayed signatures for multiple pardons Biden issued on January 19, his final full day in office. That was the day he pardoned lawmakers who served on the congressional committee to investigate the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.
The National Archives told the fact-checking website Snopes that official documents published in the Federal Register use a copy of the president’s signature provided by the White House.
“At the beginning of each administration, the White House sends a sample of the President’s signature to the Office of the Federal Register, which uses it to create the graphic image for all Presidential Documents published in the Federal Register,” the National Archives wrote to Snopes.
PolitiFact contacted the National Archives and did not immediately hear back.
Our ruling
Trump said Biden’s pardons of lawmakers on the committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack “are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT,” because “they were done by Autopen.”
It’s unclear whether Biden signed the pardons with an autopen. But even if he did, a half dozen legal experts said the Constitution doesn’t require that pardons be hand-signed by the president.
Memos by the Office of the Solicitor General in 1929 and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2005 both say a president’s hand signature is not needed, and presidents, including Lincoln, routinely had subordinates sign pardons on their behalf.
There is no constitutional mechanism for overturning pardons, and an 1869 judicial ruling found that once delivered, a pardon is final. There is no legal precedent saying pardons are void if they are signed by a machine instead of the president.
The burden of proof is on the speaker, and Trump provided no evidence of a legal path to declaring Biden’s pardons void.
Based on current legal precedent, we rate the statement false.
PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact check.
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