President Donald Trump began his Mar-a-Lago golf weekend on Friday by alleging that whoever controlled the “autopen” was the true president during the Biden administration. He ended the weekend aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, declaring that President Joe Biden’s pardons are “null and void” and vowing that members of the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack would be investigated, despite Biden having granted them pardons.
Trump, apparently using information from the Heritage Foundation, alleged that the pardons were signed via an automated system called an “autopen,” and threatened the January 6 Committee members, saying they are now “subject to investigation at the highest level,” and accusing them of being behind the signing of the pardons by a mechanical device.
Experts say this is false on all fronts: The pardons were signed by President Biden, the online copies at the National Archives were digitally signed, as has been the practice for decades, but there are photos of Biden signing many of the pardons, and even if they were mechanically signed, they are still valid.
“Even if Biden did use an autopen, the Justice Department (DOJ) in 2005 stated: ‘The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law,’ so Trump’s argument is not legally valid,” Newsweek reported. “This autopen allegations are part of MAGA’s larger conspiracy that claims the Biden White House was covering up for his alleged cognitive decline while in office.”
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Trump appeared prepared to pursue “voiding” the pardons, telling reporters on Air Force One it’s not his decision to make, but rather, it is up to the legal system.
“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,” President Trump alleged. And somebody was using an autopen to sign off and to give pardons to, as an example, just one example, but the J6 unselect committee.
“I don’t think Biden knew anything about it,” Trump repeated, before launching into a series of debunked conspiracy theories.
Trump also claimed that the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack “deleted and destroyed all of the information that took them over a year to get,” a claim popular among MAGA conspiracy theorists — including President Trump — but long ago found to be false.
The New York Times strongly pushed back against Trump’s claims:
“There is no power in the Constitution or case law to undo a pardon, and there is no exception to pardons signed by autopen. But Mr. Trump’s assertion, which embraced a baseless right-wing conspiracy theory about former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., was a new escalation of his antidemocratic rhetoric. Implicit in his post was Mr. Trump’s belief that the nation’s laws should be whatever he decrees them to be. And it was a jolting reminder that his appetite for revenge has not been sated.”
Trump followed his “null and void” claim board Air Force One with an early morning rant, writing at 12:35 AM Monday: “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.”
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“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 fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden!”
At the time President Biden signed the pardons, some had considered them controversial. But the Associated Press had called it “an extraordinary use of executive power to guard against potential ‘revenge’ by the new Trump administration.”
Legal experts and political observers alike are strongly denouncing Trump’s allegations.
“Trump CANNOT legally reverse Biden’s pardons. The bigger question is what improper and illegal actions will be taken by Trump’s DOJ and FBI that would fly in the face of those Biden pardons,” declared MSNBC legal contributor and correspondent Katie Phang,
“Welcome to autocracy. The Republic we have known for the last 240 years is gone. This is going to keep getting worse. Much worse. The courts mean nothing, the law means nothing, Congress is irrelevant. He is a malignant psychopath,” wrote attorney and former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski, a former Republican now the editor-in-chief of the liberal news site MeidasTouch.
Policy expert Neera Tanden, a high-level official in both the Obama and Biden administrations, asked, “does this mean everything with a Trump autopen signature is void in this Administration and the last? Because there’s a lot by autopen in every Administration. Some enterprising lawyers may want to sue.”
Tanden’s claim is supported by The Guardian, which cited Smithsonian Magazine’s report that ‘described how presidents since Thomas Jefferson have used devices to help them sign documents with greater efficiency. Jefferson, the third president from 1801 to 1809, used a polygraph, a device he found so useful he said he ‘could not live without it’.”
SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah commented, “We went to sleep in a democratic Republic. We woke up in a fascist state. That is the truth after reading this AM Trump has openly violated federal court orders and declared all pardons Pres Biden issued to those involved in Jan 6 investigation are now ‘void.’ History is warning us where this goes.”
CNN’s Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor said on-air, “there is no such thing as an ‘un-pardon’ power.”
Fox News’ Jessica Tarlov remarked, “For those who claimed Joe Biden went too far with his pardons, what do you say now? Donald Trump is not a king. He needs to stop trying to act like one.”