President Trump has announced that any document signed by former President Joe Biden using an autopen is “terminated” and has “no further force or effect,” claiming without evidence that Biden was not involved in the autopen process. The move, delivered in a social media post, escalates ongoing conservative attacks on Biden’s use of the device but leaves major legal questions unresolved.
On Friday, President Donald Trump said he is canceling all executive orders and other official documents issued under former President Joe Biden that he claims were signed using an autopen, a machine that can reproduce a person’s signature.
In a post on his social media platform, Trump wrote that “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.” He further asserted that Biden “was not involved in the Autopen process” and warned that if Biden later said he was, he would be “brought up on charges of perjury.” These statements have been reported by multiple outlets, including CBS News, Al Jazeera, The National and others.
Trump did not provide evidence to support his claim that about 92% of Biden’s orders and other documents were signed by autopen, and no independent tally has verified that figure. Biden signed 162 executive orders during his presidency, according to data compiled by the American Presidency Project, but public records do not show how many, if any, were signed via autopen.
The president’s declaration follows months of scrutiny by Republican lawmakers and conservative groups of Biden’s use of autopen, particularly for pardons and late‑term executive actions. A recent House Oversight Committee report, led by Republicans, questioned whether Biden personally approved all of the actions that bore his name and suggested that staff may have relied heavily on autopen as his term wound down. That report, however, did not produce direct evidence that the device was used without Biden’s authorization, and Democrats have dismissed the findings as politically motivated.
Conservative legal organizations, including the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, have promoted the idea that autopen use under Biden reflected deeper concerns about his age and mental acuity. They have argued that widespread reliance on the device could cast doubt on whether Biden personally exercised the constitutional powers of his office, particularly the pardon power. Legal experts, however, note that presidents of both parties have used autopen for years, and courts have upheld its validity when used under a president’s direction.
In March, Trump had already targeted Biden’s use of autopen for clemency, posting that pardons Biden issued in his final days — including controversial pre‑emptive pardons to members of the House committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol attack — were “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.” That earlier declaration, like his latest one, has no immediate legal force on its own and was widely derided by legal scholars as an attempt to delegitimize Biden’s decisions rather than a binding change in law.
Biden and his allies have rejected claims that he was sidelined from decision‑making. In a statement earlier this year, Biden said he “made the decisions during my presidency” on pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations, calling suggestions that he did not “ridiculous and false.” His former aides have similarly maintained that the autopen was used only with his explicit instructions, often for logistical reasons when he was traveling or unavailable to sign in person.
Trump’s latest remarks have intensified a broader fight over the legacy of the Biden administration. While Trump has already rescinded dozens of Biden’s executive orders through his own directives — a standard power available to any succeeding president — analysts note that his attempt to nullify Biden‑era pardons or to void documents solely because of the method of signature would face steep legal hurdles.
Under long‑standing Justice Department guidance, a president is not required to physically sign a bill or document for it to be valid, so long as an official acts at the president’s direction, including by using an autopen. Courts have never struck down a presidential action solely on the ground that an autopen was used, and legal scholars widely regard Trump’s threat to overturn Biden’s pardons on that basis as unlikely to survive judicial review.
The Justice Department, the White House and Biden’s representatives have so far declined to detail how many of Biden’s documents were signed with autopen or to respond point‑by‑point to Trump’s latest accusations. Any concrete effort by the Trump administration to enforce his social media declaration is expected to trigger immediate court challenges and a high‑stakes test of the legal status of autopen signatures in the modern presidency.
