President Donald Trump announced that any document former President Joe Biden signed using the autopen has been “hereby terminated.” The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized the previous administration’s reliance on the device, which applies a signature to documents without the president physically signing them.Critics of the former president argued that documents were signed without Biden’s knowledge, fueling claims that his cognitive ability declined during his time in the White House, Mediaite reported.
Biden has rejected those allegations and said he was personally responsible for every pardon issued in the final days of his presidency.
“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,” Trump wrote.“The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States. 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.”
Presidents are believed to have used versions of the autopen for more than 200 years, dating back to Thomas Jefferson, who obtained one after it was patented in 1803, according to the Shapell Manuscript Foundation.Gerald Ford, Lyndon B. Johnson, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama are all known to have used the device.
Obama became the first president to use an autopen to sign legislation in 2011.
In 2005, during the Bush administration, the Justice Department concluded the autopen is legal.
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“A person may sign a document by directing that his signature be affixed to it by another,” a DOJ memo said. Legal scholars have also noted that the Constitution does not require presidents to personally sign pardons.
