WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — President Donald Trump claimed in a social media post late Sunday night that former President Joe Biden’s eleventh-hour pardons for numerous officials are no longer valid — a power not granted to Trump in the Constitution.
Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social that Biden’s sweeping preemptive pardons are “are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.”
Without citing any evidence, Trump also alleged Biden “did not know anything about” the pardons.
Just hours before leaving office, Biden pardoned lawmakers who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as former high-ranking health official Dr. Anthony Fauci, who steered the United States through the COVID-19 pandemic and retired Gen. Mark Milley, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Biden also pardoned several members of his own family just before his term expired. The White House released Biden’s statements regarding his Jan. 20 pardons.
Autopen used before
The Autopen is a device that replicates signatures and was used by former President Barack Obama in 2011 to sign an extension of the Patriot Act.
Experts say the debate over the use of the Autopen was settled in a 2005 opinion from the White House Office of Legal Counsel that stated a president may direct a subordinate to affix his or her signature to a bill using the mechanism.
David Super, who focuses on constitutional and administrative law at Georgetown University, said Trump’s Autopen argument is “absurd.”
“But even if it wasn’t, the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says the president has the power to pardon,” Super said.
“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,” he said.
The right-wing Heritage Foundation posted a graphic on the social media platform X on March 10 and 11, claiming the foundation’s “Project Oversight” uncovered the exact same signature on a number of Biden’s pardons.
Fox News also claimed on March 9 that Biden’s exact same signature was found by Heritage on numerous documents from 2022 and 2024 that were published in the Federal Register.
The National Archives said in a statement that all signatures on official documents published in the Federal Register come from “one graphic file,” according to Snopes.
Press secretary defends ‘raising the point’
Kermit Roosevelt, constitutional law expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Autopen argument is a “red herring.” Trump’s other suggestion, that Biden didn’t know about the pardons, would essentially make them invalid.
“If the president doesn’t know that something was done, then it’s not a valid official act,” Roosevelt said. “But I highly doubt that that happened. I know of no reason to think that that did happen.”
“I mean, it is sort of characteristic of Trump to make insinuations and raise questions without any evidence, and then the White House says he’s just asking questions,” Roosevelt said. “I don’t think that’s a great way to govern.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Trump was “raising the point that did the president even know about these pardons? Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge?”
“I think it’s a question that everybody in this room should be looking into,” Leavitt said, citing the New York Post as a source.
The White House did not immediately respond to a question about the Trump administration’s use of the Autopen.
Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.
