US President Donald Trump said he has revoked all pardons and commutations signed with an autopen by his predecessor, Joe Biden.
“Any document, proclamation, executive order, memorandum, or contract signed by the now infamous unauthorized ‘autopen’ order within the administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. is hereby null and void and of no further force or effect,” President Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social on Tuesday night.
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“Those who receive a ‘pardon’, ‘reduction of pay’, or other legal document so signed, please note that such document is completely and completely terminated and has no legal effect,” he said.
However, legal experts say the US president’s move is not legally enforceable.
So what document did Biden sign with AutoPen, who is affected, and is Trump’s move legal?
What documents did Biden sign with an autopen?
Trump has repeatedly argued that Biden’s use of an autopen, a mechanical device that allows him to sign without using his hands, is a reflection of the former president’s physical and mental frailty.
According to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, Biden issued 4,245 pardons during his four-year term, more than any U.S. president since the early 20th century.
Most of these actions resulted in reduced or reduced sentences. Although Biden granted only 80 individual pardons, the second-lowest number over the same period, he is best known for his “proclamation pardons,” which affected entire classes of Americans.
That includes declaratory pardons for military veterans convicted of violating anti-gay laws (now repealed) and people convicted of certain federal marijuana crimes, according to the Pew Research Center.
However, it is unclear which of the pardons and clemency orders ordered by Biden were signed using an autopen and which ones.
Are President Trump’s actions legal?
Bernadette Miller, an expert on U.S. and British constitutional law at Stanford University, told Al Jazeera that Trump does not have the power to revoke pardons or commutations.
“This proclamation has no legal effect. Laws and pardons signed by Biden with an autopen remain in effect. The only exceptions are executive orders that remain in effect only until revoked by the same or another president,” she told Al Jazeera in an email.
“These orders can be revoked by President Trump, so perhaps this statement will rescind those kinds of orders. But the pardon and the law remain in effect.”
Separately, Poynter Media Institute-based fact-checking website PolitiFact said: “There is no constitutional mechanism to overturn a pardon, and an 1869 judicial ruling states that a pardon, once granted, is final.”
PolitiFact said on its website that the U.S. Constitution also does not specify whether a pardon requires a handwritten signature.
Who will be affected by President Trump’s moves?
President Trump has previously claimed that a series of “preemptive” pardons that Biden issued to U.S. lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol were signed with an autopen.
A mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Biden as president, claiming the 2020 election was stolen. Trump and his allies have repeatedly failed to prove massive fraud in the election.
The president and his allies view Republicans who chose to investigate Trump, including former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, as traitors to the Republican movement.
In March, President Trump said on Truth Social that the pardons for these members of Congress “were made by autopen, and therefore are null and void, void, and of no further enforcement or effect.”
Was Biden the first to use an autopen?
According to PolitiFact, Biden is not the only US president to rely on an autopen.
Similar devices have been used throughout most of U.S. history, but as technology has advanced, the nature of autopens has also changed.
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, used what was known as a polygraph. This is a device consisting of two pens equipped so that the second pen can copy the actions of the first pen.
In the early 1960s, John F. Kennedy used a more modern version of the autopen. Recently, Barack Obama even used an autopen.
PolitiFact also discovered two legal memos from 1929 and 2005 stating that U.S. presidents do not have to sign documents by hand.
