On his final day in office, former President Biden issued pre-emptive pardons for members of the January 6 committee. These pardons were designed to shield recipients from potential prosecution under a future Trump administration.
Now, President Donald Trump is claiming that pardons issued by President Joe Biden are invalid because they were signed with an autopen.
An autopen is a device that mechanically replicates a person’s signature. Many U.S. presidents have used it to sign official documents, a practice dating back to Thomas Jefferson. However, Trump argues that because Biden didn’t physically sign the pardons himself, they are “void, vacant, and of no further force and effect.”
Trump made this claim on his social media platform Truth Social, using his usual nicknames for Biden and members of the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack. He also repeated the claim while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, suggesting that a court should decide the validity of the pardons.
Legal experts say Trump’s argument doesn’t hold up. The Justice Department determined in 1929 that a president has full authority over how pardons are issued. Additionally, a federal court ruled last year that pardons don’t even need to be in writing to be valid.
