US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One while flying to Washington, DC, from Florida, on March 16, 2025, above Virginia. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
In the final hours of his presidency, Joe Biden issued a slate of pardons for the members of the House Select Committee tasked with investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The president defended the unprecedented use of his office’s power as a necessity due to the looming threat of prosecution from the then-incoming Trump administration. “These public servants have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions,” Biden explained in a statement at the time.
But early Monday morning, President Donald Trump claimed that the acts of clemency toward former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and their colleagues are now null and void, citing Biden’s alleged use of an autopen, or signing machine, for his signature. Republican groups are promoting analysis that alleges that Biden used the autopen for the pardons, but it’s not clear if that’s the case on the official documentation. There is no legal (or logical) basis for Trump’s proclamation, but it does signal that he may take an even more aggressive approach to undermining his predecessor’s actions than he already has. Here’s what we know so far.
At 12:35AM, Trump posted on TruthSocial, contesting the validity of Biden’s preemptive pardons of the January 6 committee members. “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!,” he wrote.
In the post, Trump returned to a staple of his campaign rhetoric, alleging that Biden was not cognizant of his administration’s decisions, and that the pardons were likely signed without his knowledge or approval. The president even claimed that some of the committee members themselves were behind the issued pardons.
“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,” he said. “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!”
The late-night missive was just the latest in Trump’s ongoing focus on the autopen and his belief that the Biden administration overused the machine to compensate for an aging president with decreasing faculties. On Friday, Trump wrote, “The person who was the real President during the Biden years was the person who controlled the Autopen!” In another post, Trump shared a meme featuring the official presidential portraits for the last three presidential terms. In between Trump’s two photos was an image of an autopen signing a signature to represent Biden’s presidency.
The autopen conspiracy theory has traveled through right-wing circles. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, shared an analysis which it claimed showed that several of Biden’s signatures on the pardon documents were the same.
An autopen is a mechanical device that’s used to replicate a person’s signature. According to NPR, the device’s origins trace back to the 1800s to a similar patented gadget called a “polygraph” that duplicated writing, though the device would be classified as a “pantograph” today. President Thomas Jefferson was said to be an avid user and several of the devices he owned have survived to the present day and one can be found in the collections at Monticello.
Though autopens are often used by those who often give autographs like celebrities, it has a history of official uses as well. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Harry Truman is believed to be the first to use an autopen in office while Gerald Ford’s staffers reportedly used the device to fulfill autograph and photo requests sent to the White House.
The short answer is no. In 2005, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a guidance that a president could use an autopen to sign legislation, stemming from a question from George W. Bush’s White House counsel. “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,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Howard Nielson, Jr. said at the time.
In 2011, Barack Obama became the first president to use the autopen to sign legislation into a law when he directed staffers to use the device to sign an extension to the Patriot Act while he was overseas in Europe rather than fly the unsigned bill out as it was traditionally done. The New York Times reported at the time that the White House cited the Bush-era guidance in their decision to use the autopen.
Jeffrey Crouch, an American University professor who specializes in presidential pardons, told Axios that Biden wouldn’t be the first to use the device when granting clemency. “Other presidents have used an autopen to grant pardons,” he said.
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