All presidents use this robot pen, even Trump – but now he’s blowing up about it

Washington: It had all the trappings of a fringe conspiracy theory that would live and die on the internet and in Donald Trump’s frequent rhetorical digressions.

For days, the US president has remarked on his predecessor Joe Biden’s use of a so-called autopen – a machine that reproduces a handwritten signature – to sign documents such as executive orders and pardons.

US President Donald Trump throws pens into the crowd after signing executive orders.Credit: AP

Using an autopen has been accepted practice for years – Trump acknowledged using it himself for things such as letters to sick children – but Biden’s perceived cognitive decline lends weight to a narrative that he used the machine to outsource decision-making.

“Did he know what he was doing?” Trump said aboard Air Force One on Sunday (Washington time). “Did he authorise it? Or is this somebody in an office, maybe a radical left lunatic, just signing whatever that person wants?”

But a little later, Trump escalated, asserting in a 12.30am social media post that use of the autopen had voided Biden’s pre-emptive pardons of people on a congressional committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, pro-Trump riots in Washington.

“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” Trump wrote.

An automatic signing machine, known colloquially as an autopen.Credit: AP

“In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime.

“Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level.”

The autopen controversy emerged from an analysis of Biden’s signatures by the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing Washington-based think tank that authored Project 2025. It claimed Biden’s use of the device called into question the legitimacy of his executive actions.

Initially, the think tank’s assertions circulated on social media and the US’s myriad conservative podcasts and conspiratorial blogs.

They were also picked up by Fox News and The New York Post, which acknowledged other presidents used the autopen. “But none has shown the same symptoms of senility and dementia [as Biden],” the newspaper said.

However, Newsweek reported the Heritage Foundation’s conclusions were fundamentally flawed because they were based on the National Archives’ digitised versions of Biden’s orders, which are not the original documents and all display the same computer-generated signature. The National Archive has been contacted for comment.

Furthermore, it was established in a 2005 Justice Department memo that the president need not physically sign documents and may delegate this task to a subordinate using an autopen.

The extent of Biden’s autopen use is not known, but many presidents have used it heavily, and Biden granted more acts of clemency than any other president, comprising 80 pardons and 4165 commutations.

Trump has toyed with the issue for a week, including posting a meme depicting portraits of the past three US presidents: Trump from 2017 to 2021, an autopen from 2021 to 2025, then Trump again.

Joe Biden was far from the only president to make use of an autopen.Credit: Bloomberg

But his subsequent Truth Social post represented a significant escalation, with Trump directly claiming Biden’s pre-emptive pardons of key figures on the January 6, 2021 committee – Democratic senator Adam Schiff and former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney among them – were invalid.

He also said these people would now be subject to investigation.

Following Trump’s post, Schiff responded: “The members of the Jan 6 Committee are all proud of our work. Your threats will not intimidate us. Or silence us.”

Since becoming president again, Trump has hinted at wanting to investigate Biden, his family and those who probed the January 6 riots.

“I went through four years of hell by the scum that we had to deal with … It’s really hard to say that they shouldn’t have to go through it all,” he told Fox News in his first week back in office.

At a briefing on Tuesday (AEDT), White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked whether Trump had received advice from legal counsellors that he could rule his predecessor’s pardons invalid. Leavitt said Trump was only asking questions about Biden’s competence.

“The president was begging the question that I think a lot of journalists in this room should be asking … did the [former] president even know about these pardons? Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge?” Leavitt said.

Asked whether there was any evidence Biden was not aware of the pardons, Leavitt said: “You’re a reporter, you should find out.”

On board Air Force One, Trump predicted the courts would ultimately decide the validity of the signatures. But Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale University, was emphatic Trump’s argument would fall flat legally.

“The notion of an autopen is certainly not going to go anywhere in any court in the United States,” he said.

“The question is not whether you used an autopen but whether the president – any president – has given thought and consideration to the use of pardons and executive orders. The use of a mechanical instrument has no relationship to that.”

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