President Donald Trump said Friday he will try to reverse any law, pardon or still-in-effect executive order that former President Joe Biden signed with an autopen. However, it wasn’t immediately clear how that would work or whether it would be legal.
Trump declared in a social media post that any documents Biden signed with the autopen are “hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect.”
“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 alleged. “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!”
The White House press office didn’t immediately respond to a request for the list of documents Trump believes he can rescind based on the manner in which they were signed.
States Newsroom also asked the Trump administration whether officials believe the president would need to sign an executive order to implement his social media post.
Experts dismissed earlier autopen challenge
The post was similar to one Trump published in March when he claimed any pardons Biden signed with the autopen were void, something legal experts said at the time was “absurd” and a “red herring.”
Trump brought up his frustration with autopen use again in June, when he ordered the White House counsel and the U.S. attorney general to investigate when and why Biden administration staff used an autopen.
Trump said during an Oval Office appearance at the time he hadn’t found any evidence Biden aides violated the law.
“No, but I’ve uncovered the human mind,” Trump said. “I was in a debate with the human mind and I didn’t think he knew what the hell he was doing. So it’s one of those things, one of those problems. We can’t ever allow that to happen to our country.”
Biden and his spokespeople have repeatedly said he knew what official documents were being signed in his name and rejected claims that White House staff used the autopen without his authorization or knowledge.
Biden released a statement in June following the Trump memorandum, saying the investigation “is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.”
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations,” Biden wrote at the time. “Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
While presidents have regularly rescinded their predecessors’ executive orders, usually within their first few days or weeks in office, Congress would very likely need to act in order to alter or eliminate any laws that Biden signed with an autopen. Trump seeking to overturn a law unilaterally, or part of a law, would likely lead to a lawsuit over whether he has that power.
Trump doesn’t cite legal authority
It also wasn’t immediately clear what legal authority Trump believes he has as president to undo pardons if Biden used an autopen to sign the documents.
David Super, a constitutional and administrative law professor at Georgetown University, told States Newsroom in March that “the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says the president has the power to pardon.”
“So if President Biden wanted to tell someone they’re pardoned simply verbally, he could do that. It wouldn’t have to be in writing at all,” he said. “Administratively, of course, we want things in writing. It makes things a lot simpler, but there’s no constitutional requirement.”
Ashley Murray contributed to this report.
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