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President Donald Trump signs an executive order barring transgender female athletes from competing in women’s or girls’ sporting events, in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Legal experts have been laughing off a claim made by President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform early Monday that pardons handed out by his predecessor, Joe Biden, to Jan. 6 committee members are “hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT” because they were signed into effect with an autopen device — a process that dates back “since roughly Truman,” according to lawyers and former prosecutors, who bash Trump’s claim as a “comical and chilling” power grab and “ridiculous sideshow.”
“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 in a late-night post at 12:35 a.m. EST.
“In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!” the president said. “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. 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.”
As one of his final acts in office, Biden granted pardons on Jan. 20 to several people who he said would risk prosecution and harassment under President Trump. The list included General Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci and lawmakers who investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as their staff members.
Milley, Fauci, and the members and staff of the now-defunct Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol had been “threatened with criminal prosecutions” before being selected by Biden. The committee was made up mostly of Democrats, but two Republicans — Rep. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois — were also members and recognized by the former president. Members of law enforcement who testified before the committee, including those with the U.S. Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department, were also pardoned.
Trump said on Truth Social that he believed the people Biden selected were “probably responsible” for the documents being signed themselves on their own behalf “without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden!”
Legal experts on Monday called Trump’s proposed fight to get the pardons voided “dead on arrival,” saying it defies precedent and common sense.
“No presidential action has ever been invalidated or undone because it was signed by autopen,” explained former assistant U.S. attorney Elie Honig, who now works as a legal expert for CNN. “This is a ridiculous sideshow. … We’ve had autopen for decades. … And while the pardon power itself is extremely broad, there is no such thing as an un-pardon power. This thing feels to me just like a rabbit hole.”
Matt Bennett, who previously served in the White House as a deputy assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs for Bill Clinton, told the network: “I think it’s both comical and chilling. It’s comical because it’s ridiculous to say that you can pardon someone, or that the autopen had anything to do with anything. … And that’s chilling because it sounds a lot like a dictator when you say, ‘I am voiding the acts of my predecessor.””
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While autopen devices — which allow a president to legally sign a document without being present — have been in use for decades, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel officially issued a memorandum opinion in 2005, declaring that a president may sign bills by “directing that his signature be affixed to it” by a subordinate.
The opinion said, “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.”
Trump claimed without any evidence early Monday that Biden’s pardons were invalid and should be voided. Law experts say they don’t see much of anything that supports his argument, other than the possibility of Trump playing up Biden’s motivations for pardoning the people that he did.
“There’s no magic in the mechanism of a pardon,” said Kimberly Wehle, a University of Baltimore law professor who has written about pardon power, in a statement to Axios. It’s “conceivable” that the Supreme Court could possibly look at Biden’s pardons as being a preemptive overstep, but that doesn’t appear to be what Trump is pushing, only the autopen argument.
“The key question with the pardon power is, ‘What was the president’s intent?’” Honig explained on CNN.
“Ultimately, it may find itself in the court,” former Manhattan prosecutor Jeremy Saland told the network. “There’s certainly questions whether you can pre-pardon someone — I understand that. But this is not the means to effectuate it by just blanketly saying in a tweet at night or a Trump Truth Social [post] at night that they must be vacated.”
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Saland added, “This is a power grab, for lack of a better term, by the president, you know, to effectuate — whether that’s revenge of people he doesn’t like on the Jan. 6 committee, whether that’s Jack Smith specifically or Fauci, one doesn’t know, but it’s certainly to move his ends, whatever they may be.”
Regardless of whether Trump is right or wrong, Wehle noted how simply fighting something as “ridiculous” as Biden’s pardons because of the use of autopen could cause tremendous legal headaches for the people involved.
“The damage, to some degree, will already have been done,” she said.
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