President Donald Trump has announced his intention to nullify executive orders signed by former President Joe Biden using an autopen, reviving his longstanding criticism of the pardons issued by Biden at the conclusion of his presidency.
It is a move that is illegally uncertain.
Trump has often drummed up outrage over Biden’s alleged use of autopen to sign pardons, executive orders and other documents, in an effort to point out Biden’s “cognitive decline”.
An autopen mechanically replicates a person’s signature.
Trump took to social media to declare, “Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect.”
“I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally.”
While the use of autopen systems has been a common practice among previous presidents, including Barack Obama, Trump argues that Biden’s reliance on the device was evidence of his mental incapacity and lack of control over the White House.
Conservative legal commentator Ed Whelan said on social media that Trump was free to revoke executive orders, whether or not Biden personally signed them.
“But he doesn’t have the same freedom with respect to ‘anything else’ (e.g., bills enacted by Congress, pardons) that Biden directed be signed by autopen,” he said.
The US justice department in 2005 said the US president does not need to sign a bill by hand and can direct an official “to affix the president’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen”.
In a historical context, Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to sign a bill using an autopen while he was traveling in Europe in 2011.
In his last days in office, Biden issued pardons for people targeted by Trump, including Biden’s own son, politicians who probed Trump, a military general who had criticised Trump and the country’s top COVID-19 expert.
Biden was 82 when he left office, while Trump is 79 and due to leave office in January 2029.
