President Donald Trump just made what could be the biggest political move of his career.
Trump is moving to terminate all executive orders and documents signed by former President Joe Biden’s White House with an autopen.
Trump said the mechanical signature device was used illegally to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline.
“Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect,” Trump announced on Truth Social. “The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States.”
“Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury,” Trump wrote.
The autopen device has been used by U.S. presidents since the Truman administration to sign documents when they are traveling or to handle large volumes of paperwork.
Trump accused Biden’s staff of using the autopen when his mental health was in clear decline and without his knowledge, an illegal act that would have usurped presidential authority.
“The Radical Left Lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him,” Trump wrote. “I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally.”
There are legal questions about Trump’s ability to cancel executive orders based on how they were signed. A 2005 Justice Department memo under President George W. Bush found that using an autopen is legal for presidential signatures.
“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,” the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote in 2005. “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.”
The memo emphasized that while presidents can outsource the signing of documents, they cannot delegate their decisions on approving and signing bills.
Biden signed 162 executive orders during his presidency, according to the American Presidency Project. It is unclear how many were signed using an autopen, and how many Biden actually approved.
Trump had ordered an investigation in June into Biden’s autopen use, and said there was evidence of a “conspiracy [to] abuse the power of presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline.”
In September, Trump unveiled a Presidential Walk of Fame photo at the White House that replaced Biden’s portrait with a picture of the autopen device.
Trump has focused particularly on Biden’s White House use of the autopen for pardons.
In March, Trump has previously declared that Biden’s preemptive pardons of members of the House committee investigating January 6 were “hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.”
Trump already signed an executive order in January rescinding nearly 80 Biden-era executive orders through normal presidential authority.