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Biden autopen row: Can Trump ‘terminate’ all orders? Legal experts give verdict
President Donald Trump said that any executive order, memorandum, or federal directive signed by Joe Biden using the autopen would stand ‘terminated’.
President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that any executive order, memorandum, or federal directive signed by his predecessor Joe Biden, using the autopen, would now stand ‘terminated’. The announcement came in a Truth Social post.
As per Trump, 92 percent of Biden's official acts were executed by mechanical signature and not personal approval. Trump alleged that Biden had not been ‘involved in the autopen process’ while accusing unnamed staffers of having acted illegally.
Also Read | What is an autopen that Biden used to sign all pardon documents?
“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. The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States,” he said on Truth Social.
The POTUS added, “The Radical Left Lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him. 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. Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
An autopen is a machine that replicates a person's handwritten signature. It captures the signature digitally and, via a mechanical arm or pen, uses it to sign documents, rendering an end product very close to a handwritten signature.
Can Trump legally ‘terminate’ the orders?
While a president can change his predecessor's orders, the contention here is with the autopen. A 2005 Justice Department guidance states that “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 ... by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.”
However, Trump has alleged that Biden was not involved in the autopen process. Some legal experts have meanwhile quashed Trump's assertion that Biden's pardons with the Autopen are ‘void’.
While legal experts are yet to weigh in on Trump's recent posts, they have spoken earlier about the use of Autopen and its legality in the case of granting presidential pardons.
David Super, who focuses on constitutional and administrative law at Georgetown University, said “the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says the president has the power to pardon.” He added, “So if President Biden wanted to simply verbally tell someone they're pardoned, he could do that. It wouldn't have to be in writing at all. Administratively, of course, we want things in writing. It makes things a lot simpler, but there's no constitutional requirement,” as per News from the States.
Kermit Roosevelt, constitutional law expert at the University of Pennsylvania told the publication “If the president doesn't know that something was done, then it's not a valid official act. But I highly doubt that that happened. I know of no reason to think that that did happen.”
Notably, previous presidents like Barack Obama and George W Bush have used the autopen as well. While the use of the autopen has remained a matter of some debate, orders have not been struck down in court solely on that basis.
