What is an autopen? Trump’s Joe Biden autopen accusations, explained

Before leaving office Joe Biden issued a series of preemptive pardons, insulating various people and his family from retribution by the incoming Trump regime. Many (including myself) saw this as a depressing abuse of presidential power, roughly in line with what we’d expect from Trump himself. But, having seen everything else that’s happened since the inauguration, I’ll hold up my hands and admit that Biden probably made the right call.

Now, as proof of how eager Trump is to get revenge on those he feels have wronged him, he’s attempting to dismiss those pardons and various other orders as “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT”. He underlines that those Biden attempted to protect “should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level”.

His justification for dismissing the pardons is a Heritage Foundation claim that certain Biden signatures were “done by autopen”, which he claims means “[Biden] knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime.” So, what is Autopen and is there even a smidge of justification for Trump’s position?

What is an autopen?

An autopen is not a specific device, but a range of equipment used to automatically sign a person’s signature. Multiple presidents have used the technology, with one notable occasion being when Barack Obama was vacationing in Hawaii and needed to sign an important bill. Faced with the expense and time of flying the document to him to sign, he authorized the use of an autopen to put his signature on the document without him being present.

Trump and his advisors are now claiming an autopen was used on presidential orders without Biden’s knowledge, rendering them null and void. The New York Post says they have an anonymous source who claims White House staff were making decisions on what documents were “signed” by Biden, who was said to be too senile to notice.

If it were true that Biden staffers were forging the president’s signature to make orders without his knowledge that would be treasonous and would indeed nullify them. To support their claim the Heritage Foundation has singled out documents in the Federal Register they say have suspicious Biden signatures on them. In response, the Federal Register pointed out: “At the beginning of each administration, the White House sends a sample of the President’s signature to the Office of the Federal Register, which uses it to create the graphic image for all Presidential Documents published in the Federal Register.”

This means the documents held by the Federal Register have a different signature from the physical ones Biden signed, meaning (and I hope you’re sitting down for this bombshell revelation) Trump’s claims are not exactly truthful. It also goes without saying there’s also a mountain of photographic evidence of Biden physically signing the very orders which Trump claims are forged.

In a just world that would be the end of the matter. Trump’s claim has been debunked with hard evidence, and that’s where it should end. But these days a pesky lil’ thing like reality isn’t a match for the Trump administration, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump’s lawyers making his case to a MAGA judge who’ll be all too happy to ignore the evidence to the contrary and begin rescinding Biden’s orders on this pretense.