The News
President Donald Trump’s claim that the pardons signed by Joe Biden at the end of his term are now “void” and “vacant” began with an outcry among Trump allies about the former president’s mental capacity.
Trump declared Monday, without citing any evidence, that his predecessor had not seen some of the documents that have his name on them. But that prospect was first invoked nearly two weeks ago by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Trump ally. Bailey asked the Department of Justice to “investigate whether it was Biden or others who took executive actions” in his final days.
“Biden’s mental decline is famous,” Bailey wrote, suggesting that if the then-president hadn’t seen or understood some of the orders he signed, including pardons and sentence commutations, then “whatever actions he took were void.”
The following day, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project claimed on X that every document signed by Biden “used the same autopen signature except for the announcement that the former President was dropping out of the race last year.”
Heritage did not imply that all of those documents were invalid. And the National Archives said in a statement last week that the Biden-signed documents it digitally transmitted for publication in the Federal Register used a stock signature provided by the White House, indicating that the paper copies of the documents may have used a different version.
After Heritage urged investigators to “determine who controlled the autopen and what checks there were in place,” conservative media began raising questions about whether Biden’s work could be undone.
“Does it negate some of the pardons that were so handily given out there at the end of Biden’s time in office?” asked Lara Trump on her podcast.
“Wouldn’t it be great [if those] last-minute pardons are not legally binding?” Heritage president Kevin Roberts speculated on Newsmax. “That would be very appropriate.”
Trump addressed those questions on Thursday with reporters in the Oval Office, before escalating his unproven allegations about Biden’s knowledge of his own late-term orders.
“Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden.”
Trump cited no evidence for the claim that Biden was unaware of his final pardons.
Know More
The administration is serious about the argument that a swath of Biden pardons are “void” — but to what extent Trump will act on that belief remains unclear. He is simply raising a question, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.
Leavitt argued that it “would propose perhaps criminal or illegal behavior if staff members were signing” on Biden’s behalf.
Asked whether he’s ever used autopen to sign documents, Trump on Monday said he had, “only for very unimportant papers.”Biden attended a St. Patrick’s Day Mass in Delaware on Monday; he did not comment on Trump’s move, and a spokesperson for his office did not respond when asked about it. Andrew Bates, a former spokesman for the Biden administration, said that Trump was “spending his time on conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s pardons and touring the Kennedy Center” instead of fulfilling campaign promises to lower prices.
The View From Jan. 6 Committee members
Members of the lapsed congressional committee on the Capitol riot who Biden preemptively pardoned before leaving office are so far shrugging off Trump’s talk of ignoring the former president.
On his Substack, former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger said that the Trump post was a “bluff” that wasn’t intimidating any of the people who’d served on the committee.
“Trump won’t actually follow through on this,” he wrote. “He never follows through on anything that takes actual courage. It’s just another attempt to stoke fear, to look tough to his cultish followers while he cowers behind his endless grievances.”
“The members of the Jan 6 Committee are all proud of our work,” California Sen. Adam Schiff wrote on X. “Your threats will not intimidate us. Or silence us.”
David and Shelby’s view
One pattern of Trump’s second term so far is that he’ll invoke executive powers with questionable legal basis, betting that the executive will win any race with the slower-acting judiciary. Another pattern, one that’s not new to this term, is for Trump or his allies to elevate stories that the rest of his party might not take seriously — but would, if the president did.
Both patterns are playing out here, with the president himself endorsing an idea that most Republicans (and media outlets) were ignoring as the chatter on conservative media picked up. A president can’t void a predecessor’s pardon by saying so. But some Trump allies are baselessly claiming he can; Indiana Sen. Jim Banks wrote this morning that Jan. 6 panel members can be investigated now because their pardons “were illegitimately signed by autopen, rendering them legally invalid.”
The use of the autopen doesn’t actually do that. Twenty years ago, the White House counsel’s office studied the issue for the George W. Bush administration, concluding that any 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.”
But the Trump-Bailey-Banks premise is that Biden did not know that the pen was moving. No one in the former administration has verified he did — hence the call for the new DOJ to investigate the Biden White House.