Trump calls the autopen bluff

[Da Lat]

.



Trump calls the autopen bluff









By Mike McDaniel
Nov. 29, 2025

It has been often observed that Donald Trump plays 3D chess while his opponents play checkers. He’s done it again:

President Donald Trump announced on Friday he is terminating all documents allegedly signed by former President Joe Biden with the autopen.

In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed 92% of documents signed during Biden's presidency were done so with the device.



President Trump earlier replaced a portrait of Joe Biden in the White House with a photograph of an autopen:







Hilarious indeed, but it raised a difficult constitutional issue: when is the use of an autopen valid? Certainly, for signing the innumerable letters sent to Americans and others that have no legal effect, and probably even for proclamations in the same category, though most presidents like to use signing such things as public relations events—unless they’re so demented they can’t.

The issue becomes more acute when an autopen is used to sign documents with legal effect such as treaties, laws, executive orders and the like. The Constitution is essentially mute on the issue. Autopens did not exist in the late 1700s. However, the DOJ issued a July 2005 opinion which essentially established:

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. Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.

Note the opinion refers to bills, but what of pardons, commutations and similar documents? George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley addressed the issue of Joe Biden’s blanket pardons:

So, at least for this senior Justice Department official, it was not just Biden who may have had little idea of what pardons were being issued under his name. The confusion was shared by implementing attorneys. That is a serious problem in the use of this presidential power by unseen, unnamed staff members. [skip]

What is particularly disconcerting is how accountability for any abuse is made more difficult by the large number of staff contributing to these lists and lack of clearly defined decision makers. With Biden abdicating his own responsibility, staffers were allowed to effectively add names to a signed blank page, exercising a presidential power with the level of circumspection of an inter-office memo.

It has long been known Joe Biden was suffering from progressive dementia that obviously and grossly affected his cognitive and physical abilities. Speculation as to who was actually running the country has been rampant. This speculation was heightened when it was revealed Biden didn’t personally review commutations and pardons:

Among the sweeping last-minute acts: on December 12, Biden commuted approximately 1,500 sentences and pardoned 39 individuals. Just three days before leaving office, he commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 federal inmates convicted of crack cocaine offenses. In all, Biden granted 4,245 acts of clemency, 96% of which were issued between October 2024 and January 2025, according to the Pew Research Center.

Issued when he was arguably most demented and could not possibly have reviewed each commutation or pardon. The matter continues to be investigated by the Congress, and presumably, by the DOJ.

What Trump has done, surely after a complete investigation of the legal issues, will force Biden’s Handlers to put up or shut up. Even if one takes the most permissive interpretation possible, there must be a paper trial from the date and time the POTUS authorized an autopen signature, which includes the names and presumably the actual signatures of everyone through whose hands that authorization passed to the person who affixed that signature to a document by autopen at a specific date and time.

Their problem is that no such documentation apparently exists. If it doesn’t, how can anything signed by autopen be considered valid? Can Joe Biden affirm anything, remember anything?

If Biden’s Handlers wish to preserve anything Trump has now invalidated, they’re going to have to agree to have Biden examined by independent psychiatrists and neurologists, who are inevitably going to establish that Biden is so impaired even his opinion of his favorite ice cream flavor can’t be trusted. Oh, the lies, even crimes, that will expose. Failing that, Biden’s Handlers are going to have to produce the aforementioned tracking documents which don’t exist, or all the people supposedly involved with every individual autopen signed document. That’s not going to be possible. Even the attempt would result in massive perjury as Trump has warned.

Biden’s Handlers appear to have outsmarted themselves, and Trump continues to play 3D chess.

Become a subscriber and get our weekly, Friday newsletter with unique content from our editors. These essays alone are worth the cost of the subscription.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.


------------------

Link: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...pen_bluff.html






.