Trump keeps talking about Biden using an autopen — What is it?
President Donald Trump on Friday said on Truth Social that any document signed by his predecessor, Joe Biden, using an autopen is “hereby terminated.” It’s not the first time that Trump has gone after Biden’s use of the machine — although it has been used by other past presidents, and experts largely say it is constitutionally sound.
“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,” Trump said in his post.
Exactly what Trump’s declaration means is unclear: a social media post isn’t enough to quash current executive orders. When USA Today reached out to The White House with questions about how Biden’s orders being “terminated,” it referred them back to Trump’s post.
What is an autopen?
An autopen, or “Robot pen,” is used to duplicate signatures. It doesn’t scan them, but instead, the machine uses an actual pen to produce a signature with ink.
According to Damilic, a company that makes autopens, it is the “oldest, most commonly used signing machine,” and has been used by universities, government agencies and other institutions, as well as the “world’s most influential leaders.”
“Their reliability is well established,” Damilic said.
Autopens were first patented in the U.S. in 1803. Several presidents have used it since then — the first was Thomas Jefferson, The Shapell Manuscript Foundation wrote, though this was different than the ones used in present day. Devices from Jefferson’s day were known as “polygraph machines,” and they copied out entire letters. Autopens later started using a template, made by carving a channel into plastic, which the actual pen would follow.
“Today, of course, there is no longer a physical template, but it is done digitally,” The Shapell Manuscript wrote.
Other U.S. presidents who used it include Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson let one be photographed in the White House for a picture on the cover of The National Enquirer, while John F. Kennedy’s utilization of the autopen inspired a book: “The Robot That Helped to Make a President.”
Though he did not use one himself, President George W. Bush tasked the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel with evaluating the constitutionality of the autopen for signing legislation. Howard C. Nielson, who was the deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the time, wrote that it was allowed.
“We conclude 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,” Nielson wrote in a 2005 memo. “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.”
Article I Section 7 of the Constitution deals with how legislation is passed in the U.S.
In 2011, then-President Barack Obama was the first president to sign legislation extending the Patriot Act via autopen.
Trump criticized Biden’s use of the autopen before
Trump has previously said that some of former President Joe Biden’s actions are not valid because they were done with autopen. On Truth Social in March, Trump claimed Biden’s preemptive pardons of members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection “are “hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OF EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.”
Then, on June 4, Trump ordered a formal investigation into whether Biden’s aides unlawfully exercised executive authority with the autopen. A report, published in October by the House Oversight Committee, also requested that the DOJ conduct a probe into Biden’s autopen usage.
Biden rejected these claims as politically motivated.
“I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” Biden said in a statement.
Speaking to The New York Times in a July interview, Biden pushed back against claims that the autopen was used without his consent. Biden said he was aware of its use for clemency grants and that he personally made decisions before staff used the machine.
“The autopen is, you know, is legal. As you know, other presidents used it, including Trump,” Biden told the Times, adding that Republicans making claims otherwise are “liars.”
What have experts said?
Legal experts who spoke to ABC News said Trump doesn’t have the power to overturn Biden’s actions merely on the basis that they were done by autopen.
“If the autopen is illegal, then many of the actions and regulations that presidents have done for the past four or five decades are null and void. It’s a ridiculous argument,” Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said to ABC.
Jeffrey Crouch, an assistant professor at American University, told the outlet that the president’s clemency power is vested in Article II of the Constitution and is “broad and virtually unlimited.”
A professor of constitutional law at Boston University School of Law, Jay Wexler, said in an NPR interview that the autopen issue is a “nonstarter” and a “distraction.” When it comes to pardons, nothing in the Constitution requires they be in writing at all, he said.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
