Does Trump’s claim that Biden’s pardons are ‘void’ because of autopen hold water?

United States President Donald Trump is claiming that his predecessor Joe Biden’s pardons are “void” because he allegedly used an autopen. With these allegations, the Republican is also questioning the former president’s fitness at the time of granting the pardons.

Trump’s claims stem from a similar argument by the Oversight Project, an offshoot of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. In a post on X last week, the group asked whether Biden had the “mental capacity” to order the use of an autopen for his signature.

As the focus shifts on the use of autopen by a US president, does Trump’s claim that Biden’s pardons are invalid hold water?

Let’s understand.

What is autopen?

An autopen is a machine that allows people to sign a document without being physically present. The printer-sized machine has an arm to hold a pen that can be used to reproduce signatures.

According to the US firm The Autopen Company, which makes these autopens, the devices have been “used by universities, government agencies, and other institutions for more than 60 years.”

“The Autopen has long been a tool for the world’s most influential leaders, allowing them to more effectively apply their time and attention to important issues without compromising the impact of personalised correspondence,” it writes.

What has Trump said?

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday night that a series of last-minute pardons issued by former US President Biden is “void”.

He particularly targeted the pardons granted to members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

“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,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.

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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 further alleged.

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…

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) March 17, 2025

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One later, the US president said courts will decide whether Biden’s pardons have legal force.

“It’s not my decision, that would be up to a court,” he said, as per New York Times (NYT). “But I would say that they’re null and void, because I’m sure that Biden didn’t have any idea that it was taking place.”

Who did Biden pardon?

Towards the end of his presidency, Biden granted a series of pre-emptive pardons to members of his family and other people he thought would face Trump’s political retribution.

On January 19, the then-US president issued pardons to people who were not charged with a crime yet.

It included members of Congress on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, the committee’s staff and the police officers who testified before the panel.

Trump has previously said that former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who was a member of the House committee, should “go to jail” along with the rest of the panel.

Biden also pardoned some of Trump’s most high-profile rivals like General Mark Milley and Dr Anthony Fauci.

Are Biden’s actions really void?

No, legal experts say.

While Trump has claimed without evidence that Biden used an autopen to sign important documents, it is not unusual for White House occupants to deploy the device.

Former presidents including John F Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon have used autopen to sign correspondence and other documents, as per NPR.

Barack Obama was the first known US president to sign an official document with an autopen in 2011. He faced scrutiny after ordering an aide to use autopen on his behalf to sign legislation passed by the US Congress extending the Patriot Act for four more years.

As per NBC News, Biden has also used an autopen to sign official documents. But it is unsure whether he used the device to sign some pardons. BBC Verify found that the former US president signed pardons by hand and not autopen in several instances.

Trump has himself acknowledged using the device. After his post on Truth Social, when reporters asked him on Air Force One if he had ever used an autopen, the US president replied: “We may use it, as an example, to send some young person a letter,” he said, pointing out that White House receives many letters from children and people who are ill. “But to sign pardons and all of the things he signed with an autopen, is disgraceful.”

Legal experts say the US law does not say anything about official documents signed by US presidents with an autopen being invalid.

“The Constitution doesn’t even require that the pardon be written, so the idea that the signature is by autopen rather than by handwritten signature seems not relevant to the constitutionality because Article II just says that the President has the power to pardon,” Bernadette Meyler, a Stanford Law School professor and constitutional law expert, told Time magazine.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, states the pardon only needs to be “accepted by its subject” to come into force.

The US Constitution also does not provide authority to a president to overturn his predecessor’s pardons.

Speaking to NPR, Jay Wexler, a professor of constitutional law at Boston University School of Law, said that he believes the autopen issue is a “nonstarter” and a “distraction.”

“The argument that the pardon fails because it was signed by an autopen fails at the get-go, because there’s no requirement that the pardon even be signed,” he added.

Andrew Moran, a politics professor at London Metropolitan University, told BBC that earlier presidents have used autopen. “On lower-level importance documents, it’s not unusual for an autopen to be used.

“But I would have thought that with something as serious as a pardon Biden would have actually signed it [by hand]”, he said.

According to a 2005 memo by the Justice Department during the George Bush administration, the President is not required to physically sign a bill for it to become law. “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,” it read.

“Rather, the President may sign a bill … by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen,” the document said.

Even if Trump were to challenge Biden’s pardons in court, he may not win.

Speaking to BBC, Professor Erin Delaney, director of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism at UCL, said that Trump’s efforts to revoke Biden’s pardons would be a “violation of unwritten constitutional norms”.

Experts say that if Trump tries to prosecute someone who received a presidential pardon, the case is expected to reach a court where it would not stand. “I can’t imagine the court saying that it wasn’t a valid pardon because of the autopen issue,” Meyler told Time magazine.  “Biden made statements regarding these pardons, so it would be hard to show that they weren’t a decision of the President.”

On Monday afternoon, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was asked whether administration lawyers had told Trump that he had legal powers to rescind Biden’s pardons signed using an autopen.

To this, she replied that the US president was just “begging the question” whether his predecessor was even aware of the pardons that were signed. She went on to postulate that Biden may not have known about some pardons but admitted that she had no evidence to prove it.

For now, it is unclear what legal path Trump plans to take to undo Biden’s orders.

With inputs from agencies