US President Donald Trump has said he will rescind all executive orders issued under his predecessor Joe Biden and believed to have been signed using an autopen, pushing dubious claims to outlaw Democratic policies.
Trump, a Republican, estimated in a social media post Friday that most of Biden’s orders were executed with an autopen, a machine that imitates specific signatures.
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“Every document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with his autopen (approximately 92% of it) is hereby destroyed and of no further force or effect,” Trump wrote.
President Trump has long argued that Biden, who was 82 when he left office in January, is too old and mentally ill to take control of the executive branch.
The Republican leader, himself 79, reiterated that message in a post Friday and threatened to prosecute Biden if he denies it.
“I hereby rescind every executive order and everything that Crooked Joe Biden did not personally sign, because the people who ran the autopen signed it illegally,” Trump said.
“Joe Biden was not involved in the autopen process and would be charged with perjury if he said he was.”
Autopens and similar mechanical signature devices have a long history in the White House, dating back to the third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson, in the early 19th century. Trump himself has used the device, especially during his first term.
But Mr. Trump has had a rocky relationship with his Democratic predecessors, including Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama.
He specifically criticized Biden’s age and use of an autopen while in office. After installing the “Presidential Walk of Fame” near the White House Rose Garden earlier this year, Trump replaced Biden’s portrait with a photo of a mechanical device.
He recently showed the photo to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who visited him this month.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump have faced off twice in the presidential election, the first time in 2020, when Mr. Trump lost, and the second time in 2024, when Mr. Biden dropped out of the race. In the end, Trump won the latter.
He has also consistently denied losing the 2020 election, falsely claiming there was widespread voter fraud.
Trump has made other misleading and unsubstantiated statements about Biden, including that White House officials took advantage of the aging Democratic Party to sign policy documents without Biden’s knowledge.
However, there is no conclusive evidence that autopens were used without the person’s knowledge under the Biden administration. Biden himself denied the allegations in a statement in June.
“Let me be clear: I made the decision during my term as president,” he wrote. “I made the decisions about pardons, executive orders, laws, and proclamations. The suggestion that I didn’t make the decisions is absurd and false.”
Nevertheless, President Trump reconsidered that claim in a message Friday on his platform Truth Social.
“The lunatics of the radical left surrounded Biden around his beautiful, resolute desk in the Oval Office and stole the presidency from him,” the Republican leader wrote.
Friday’s announcement is President Trump’s latest effort to frame the actions of his political opponents as unjust.
In March, for example, Trump posted a Truth social message that sought to revoke a pardon Biden had issued before he left the White House.
Mr. Biden had controversially granted “preemptive” pardons to politicians who served on a House special committee investigating Mr. Trump’s actions when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“I do hereby declare that the ‘pardons’ granted by Sleepy Joe Biden to the Unelected Committee on Political Thugs and many others are void and null and void and of no further force or effect by virtue of the fact that they were executed with an autopen,” Trump wrote, repeating a familiar argument.
“Joe Biden didn’t sign them, but more importantly, he didn’t know anything about them!”
Legal experts largely dismissed the then-President’s post as unconstitutional because U.S. law does not require presidential pardons to be signed in any way or in writing.
A 2005 memo from the U.S. Office of the General Counsel also explains that “the President does not have to take the physical act of personally affixing his signature to the bill he approves and decides to sign into law for it to become law.”
It added that it would be considered permissible to use an autopen to “put the president’s signature” on legislation or “instruct subordinates” to do so.
Still, Biden faced significant public concerns that his age would hinder his ability to carry out his duties, especially in the final years of his four-year term.
Biden’s dismal performance in the June 2024 presidential debate, in which he appeared rigid and struggling to maintain his frame of mind, heightened these concerns.
Democratic lawmakers ultimately pressured Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election, a step he ultimately took in July of that year.
Some critics have speculated that Biden’s age may have diminished his ability to devote time and attention to areas such as foreign policy, giving senior staff more influence over policy decisions.
Biden revealed earlier this year that he has advanced prostate cancer and is currently undergoing radiation therapy.
If Trump completes his second term, he will be 82 years old, making him several months older than Biden was when he finished his term as president. Concerns about age and mental health have also dogged Trump throughout his time in the White House.
Just this week, the New York Times published an article titled “The days are getting shorter and signs of fatigue: President Trump faces the reality of aging in office.” It detailed instances in which Trump appeared to fall asleep during public appearances and explained how Trump limited his public appearances during his second term.
President Trump took to social media to call the female reporter “ugly” and posted that she “passed” a physical and cognitive tests.
