Donald Trump intends to cancel the preemptive pardons issued by Joe Biden to members of the House committee who dared to investigate the events of January 6, 2020, when Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. Writing on Truth Social, the US President claimed that Biden’s signatures were “void” because he had signed them “with an autopen”.
Trump’s claim came after the Heritage Foundation, a pro-Trump think tank, released a report into Biden’s purported autopen use. But what is an autopen? According to the Oxford Dictionary, it is “a mechanical device that automatically reproduces a person’s signature, used typically in situations where someone is required to sign a large volume of documents”.
Hard to believe that an American president – and in the era of digital signatures – may be expected to sign documents one by one himself. Why not reintroduce the wax seal? However, according to Trump, the pardons were “void, vacant and of no further force and effect”.
His selection of choice insults and thundering tone is a reflection of his policies, also claiming that Biden may not have known about the documents themselves. “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. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!”
Biden pardoned family members and Trump foes before leaving the White House in an effort to guard against potential ‘revenge’. On January 20, his last day in office, he preemptively pardoned all members of the House Committee investigating the January 6 attack, although the lawmakers themselves said they did not need to be pardoned, having done nothing wrong.
Is Trump writing his posts himself? Yes, according to his aides: you can distinguish his style because of the abundance of capital letters. Also, Trump said more or less the same thing while flying back to Washington from Florida aboard Air Force One on Sunday, telling reporters: “It’s not my decision – that’ll be up to a court – but I would say that they’re null and void, because I’m sure Biden didn’t have any idea that it was taking place, and somebody was using an autopen to sign off and to give pardons.” Again: “The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden.” Without having any evidence, Trump made the claim that Biden “knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime.” Trump also accused the members of the Committee of having “destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people” which is why they “should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level.”
A post on Truth Social is not yet an official act however, and it remains to be seen whether it will be followed up with one.
As noted by The Guardian, there are legal precedents indicating Trump is wrong. In 1929, the US justice department held that “it is wholly for the president to decide” the method by which a pardon is handed down. Last year, a federal appeals court said presidential pardons do not even have to be in writing.
The use of the “autopen” in fact is neither new, nor significant. The first to use one was Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States. At the time – in 1809 – they called the device a “polygraph”, a sort of great-grandmother of the autopen, hybrid between a primitive photocopier and a mechanical carbon copy system. By using it, one could make automatic, real-time copies of handwritten letters. Jefferson proclaimed “he could no longer live without it” – nor could any president, although today’s systems are certainly more sophisticated. Barack Obama, for example, signed a fiscal cliff agreement from Washington while spending his Christmas break with his family in Hawaii.
