President Trump Has Not Forgotten The Autopen. You Shouldn't Either
More Than Just "Conspiracy Theory"
If a President “signs” a document via an autopen, but did not explicitly authorize that document be signed by autopen, is that signature valid?
At present, we do not know the answer. No Presidential signature has ever been challenged for its validity—until now.
On Friday, President Trump posted on Truth Social yet another bombast against President Joe Biden’s extensive (excessive?) use of an autopen device to sign official documents, arguing that all such documents are “hereby terminated.”
President Trump is all but claiming outright that every time Joe Biden’s name was “signed” via autopen amounted to a forgery. Trump is claiming outright that use of the autopen by the Biden Administration was illegal (the implication being that it was criminal). He even warned Biden of the penalties for perjury should Biden decide to contest Trump’s assertions.
It bears noting that Trump used the word “documents” and not “bills” or “executive orders” or even “pardons.” That word choice makes his condemnation of Biden’s autopen usage very close to universal. That word choice is an attack on the legitimacy of the whole of the Biden Administration.
At present, Donald Trump has confined his bombast to Truth Social. A review of Presidential Actions on the whitehouse.gov website does not list any new Executive Order or Presidential Proclamation related to Joe Biden and autopen signatures.
However, even with just a Truth Social post, Trump is reminding the country that the Biden Administration’s extravagant use of the autopen leaves unanswered the question of whether Joe Biden personally and explicitly authorized each and every signature affixed to an official document.
The Democrats undoubtedly want that question to disappear. The Democrats want to dismiss the question as just another “conspiracy theory”.
Donald Trump seems quite determined that it not disappear. That’s a good thing, because the question has already been proven to be far more than just another “conspiracy theory.”
Why Now? Sarah Beckstrom
The most obvious question to ask is why is Donald Trump choosing this moment to resurrect the autopen issue yet again?
The answer is almost certainly Sarah Beckstrom, the young National Guard member murdered last week by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who was allowed into the US after the Biden Administration shambolic and incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
The Trump Administration is portraying Beckstrom’s murder as yet another preventable death that occurred because of Biden’s incompetence and ineptitude. Had there been effective vetting of Afghans after the US withdrawal from that country, someone like Lakanwal might not have been in the US to commit that crime.
The Trump Administration has received some unlikely support from corporate media, with CNN’s own Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller conceding that the Biden Administration let thousands of Afghans in without any real background checks or vetting at all.
Well, I mean, it’s pretty well documented how he got in. We’re not 100% sure about why he was chosen to be part of Operation Refuge or Operation Welcome Allies, but there had to be some process for him to get on that plane that got him to Dulles.
But remember, this is a program that as of 2022 had moved 88,500 refugees seeking asylum from Afghanistan. Now, some of these people were people who worked for the military. Some of these people had worked for the CIA. Some of these people had worked for USAID. Most of them or their families associated with them were coming on the idea that if we stay behind, the Taliban will make us pay the price.
The vetting process that they went through with these people was chaotic. I had detectives from the Joint Terrorism Task Force assigned to that vetting process who reported back. You know, it was being run by the Department of Homeland Security. But the Afghan records were spotty, as you would imagine. The names were sometimes hard to document. People didn’t exactly know their particular dates of birth, which made, on the other hand, what they did is they collected biometrics.
It’s how this suspect who had no ID was identified when they ran his fingerprints, the biometrics that they collected from this process. That’s how they confirmed his identity.
Moreover, while Lakanwal apparently did work with the US forces in Afghanistan, there are those who served in Afghanistan who viewed Afghan interpreters and other allies as decidedly problematic, creating problems and security concerns of their own. Based on what Bronze Star recipient Mark Lucas shared with InfoWars Breanna Morello, the troops in Afghanistan often had to protect female soldiers from predatory Afghan “allies”:
While his unit had three women who served as members of its female engagement team, Lucas said, “We had to constantly protect them from our Afghan allies and the Afghan Border Patrol.”
“When we’d go out on a foot patrol, you’d have these sick Afghan men just hover around them,” he explained
Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s murderous attack last week adds credibility to such reports, no matter how strenuously Democrats and corporate media might object. There is simply no escaping the reality that having an erstwhile Afghan refugee be revealed as a murderous jihadist is a bad look for the Biden Administration’s “Operation Allies Welcome”, a program led by the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas which claimed “rigorous vetting” of all Afghan nationals admitted to the US.
The rigorous screening and vetting process, which is multi-layered and ongoing, involves biometric and biographic screenings conducted by intelligence, law enforcement, and counterterrorism professionals from DHS and DOD, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), and additional intelligence community partners. This process includes reviewing fingerprints, photos, and other biometric and biographic data for every single Afghan before they are cleared to travel to the United States. As with other arrivals at U.S. ports of entry, Afghan nationals undergo a primary inspection when they arrive at a U.S. airport, and a secondary inspection is conducted as the circumstances require.
Lakanwal represents at least one instance where the DHS “rigorous vetting” failed, with lethal consequences.
Presumably, Joe Biden directed DHS to set up and implement Operation Allies Welcome. That much is specifically documented in the DHS archives.
Was Biden fully involved in the discussion and decision process leading to Operation Allies Welcome? Did his staffers and subordinates use the autopen to issue Presidential directives without his full knowledge and explicit authorization?
Because of testimony gathered by Congress earlier this year, we do not know the answer, nor can we safely assume the answer.
By posting his intention to “cancel” anything Biden signed by autopen, President Trump is reminding the country that we do not know that answer. President Trump is taking full advantage of the opportunity to bring the autopen scandal and all its unanswered questions once again back into people’s attention spans
Autopen Questions Have Not Gone Away
While there is no denying that media attention has shifted away from the autopen scandal since the summer, that is not the same as saying that the scandal itself has somehow disappeared.
Quite the contrary, it was just at the end of October when the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a fairly scathing report detailing a number of procedural concerns regarding autopen use during the Biden Administration, all of them centered on a structural uncertainty whether or not Biden had actually authorized and directed the autopen be used to sign his name.
The Biden Autopen Presidency ranks among the greatest scandals in U.S. history. As President Biden declined, his staff abused the autopen and a lax chain-of-command policy to effect executive actions that lack any documentation of whether they were in fact authorized. While President Biden became progressively less able to do his job—when every measure should have been taken to document and, if ever questioned, prove that President Biden had made final decisions—White House staff took shortcuts and ad hoc actions to keep the Biden presidency afloat. The Committee has found that there was, in fact, a cover-up of the president’s cognitive decline and that there is no record demonstrating President Biden himself made all of the executive decisions that were attributed to him.
Biden Administration staffers admissions given during direct testimony to the Oversight Committee leave substantial questions about how Joe Biden’s authorization to use the autopen was obtained. That we even have cause to ask such questions itself challenges the legitimacy of nearly everything the Biden Administration did—if the President has not authorized something, it is fraudulent to claim that he has.
Longtime readers may recall Neera Tanden’s admission that she “directed” autopen use for nearly a year and a half, as that admission by itself created the scandal’s indisputable Constitutional dimensions.
Neera Tanden, former Director of the White House Policy Council as well as a self-described “staff secretary”, claimed in her opening remarks on Tuesday that she was the one who “directed” autopen use.
Neera Tanden, who served as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, explained in her opening remarks Tuesday that she was given authority to wield the autopen. She said she “was responsible for handling the flow of documents to and from the president” and was authorized to direct autopen use from October 2021 to May 2023 when she was serving as staff secretary and senior adviser to Biden.
What does she mean by “authorized to direct autopen use”? The answer is not merely problematic, but Constitutionally critical.
Ms. Tanden was one of the few Biden staffers who did not invoke their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, which, politically speaking, makes the choice of those who did all the more disturbing and even damning.
Ms Tanden’s surprisingly frank admission before the Committee crystalized the speculation that Biden might not have properly authorized autopen use into a real and definable political and legal question—one with disturbing ramifications for laws passed during Biden’s time in office.
At issue is not whether the use of the Autopen itself invalidates a Presidential signature. At issue is whether Joe Biden—the duly elected 46th President of the United States—authorized each and every instance of Autopen usage.
The official stance of the White House Office of Legal Counsel has for nearly 20 years been that Autopen signatures are valid when affixed upon direction by the President. However, the memo establishing that stance also is clear that the President cannot delegate the decision whether or not a signature should be so affixed.
We do not suggest that the President may delegate the decision whether to approve[]” and “sign” a bill.U.S. Const. art. I,§ 7, cl. 2. It has long been the view of the Executive Branch that the President may not delegate this decision.
If Joe Biden did not explicitly authorize the use of the Autopen—even by a perfunctory “go ahead and sign it” verbal declaration—then it is an open question whether he could have actually made the decision that a bill, executive order, or pardon should be signed.
Donald Trump’s Truth Social post brings all of this recent history back to the foreground.
None of these questions have lost their relevance, or their Constitutional significance.
None of these questions have been at all answered.
Donald Trump, with his Truth Social post, is both reminding the American people that these questions remain unanswered and challenging the Democrats to respond to those questions with honest, factual answers.
What Changes?
Of itself, President Trump’s Truth Social post is, legally speaking, a non-event. It carries no legal significance of any kind.
Bear in mind that President Trump does not need to challenge the credibility of Biden’s signature to cancel any of Biden’s Executive Orders. By mid-March, Trump had already rescinded close to 100 Biden Executive Orders. Trump did so without mentioning at all the Biden Administration’s use of the autopen to sign official documents.
Trump cancelling 100 Biden Executive Orders is significant, because Biden issued a total of 162 Executive Orders during his term of office. President Trump has already reversed the bulk of what Biden sought to achieve via Presidential directive.
However, this is why we must note Trump’s reference to “documents” and not just Executive Orders.
If Biden’s signature via autopen is invalid, what becomes of the 274 laws passed by the 118th Congress during 2023 and 2024?
What becomes of the 362 laws passed by the 117th Congress during 2021 and 2022?
Each of those laws required Joe Biden’s signature to become law. If Joe Biden’s signature was fraudulently affixed to those laws, did they become law?
We should note that, in almost every case, a good argument exists that a fraudulent Biden signature does not invalidate a law. While Article 1 Section 7 of the Constitution mandates that the President sign all legislation before it becomes law, that same section also specifies that, if the President takes no action for ten days, such legislation automatically becomes law.
Far more problematic are Joe Biden’s 13 vetoes—none of which were overridden by Congress.
Per Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution, when the President vetoes legislation he returns it to the Congress with his stated objections to the bill. Congress then has the option to reconsider and amend the legislation, override the veto by a two-thirds vote, or to simply drop the matter entirely.
Did Joe Biden legitimately sign the communications by which he returned those 13 pieces of legislation to Congress?
If he did not, did he actually veto those 13 pieces of legislation?
If Joe Biden did not veto those 13 pieces of legislation, would not the same ten-day period which arguably preserves the legitimacy of the laws Biden allegedly did sign also make those 13 pieces of legislation actual US law?
That is not an insignificant question. Biden’s last veto, of S.4199, the “JUDGES Act of 2024”, stopped a congressional effort to create new judgeships in the closing days of the 118th Congress. That bill was officially transmitted to the Oval Office on December 20, 2024, and presumably vetoed on December 23. The veto was received by the Senate on January 3, 2025.
If Joe Biden did not veto that bill it would have automatically become law and the judgeships it sought to create would now exist.
Did fraudulent use of the autopen derail Congress’ Constitutional authority to create judgeships as it believes are appropriate? Without fully adjudicating the question of how the Biden Administration used the autopen, the answer to that question is a disturbing “we do not know.”
When Donald Trump says he is cancelling all documents signed via autopen during the Biden Administration, how many documents are at issue, and what consequences follow from that cancellation?
Real Questions, Real Problems
Corporate media has predictably sought to minimize the significance of President Trump’s assertions vis-a-vis Biden Administration use of the autopen.
They note that Trump himself has used such a device.
CNN in particular highlights the body of legal opinion supporting the validity of the autopen as a means of affixing the Presidential signature onto a document.
Yet corporate media does not address the specific charge made both by President Trump and the House Oversight Committee, which is that Joe Biden did not authorize every use of the autopen—something the same body of legal opinion to which CNN genuflects explicitly requires.
We should perhaps not be surprised by corporate media’s reluctance to engage on the substance. We must remember it was corporate media who willingly participated in White House efforts to conceal Joe Biden’s indisputable cognitive decline. As Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson detailed in their “don’t blame me” tome earlier this year, everyone knew Biden was slipping into dementia, and no one wanted to say or do anything about it.
The same corporate media who assured a credulous public that there was “nothing to see” regarding Joe Biden’s dementia now wants to assure what it hopes is an equally credulous public that there is “nothing to see” regarding how the Biden Administration “signed” documents on Joe Biden’s behalf.
Except there was quite a bit to see—and quite a bit that was seen—regarding Joe Biden’s dementia, and that means there is quite a bit that needs to be seen regarding how the Biden Administration used the autopen.
No matter how much corporate media want to dismiss Donald Trump’s claims regarding the autopen, he is raising very real questions. He is raising very real questions which point to very real problems, not just for the Biden Administration but for all future administrations.
If any staffer can affix a Presidential signature to a document without the President’s express authorization, how much faith can we place in Presidential authority? How can any President presume to run a country if he cannot run his own administration?
What recourse does the nation have if a member of the White House staff opts to defraud the nation by “signing” an official document—a law, a pardon, an executive order—without Presidential authorization? How does one make the nation whole after such a deception?
The Democrats want these questions to go away. Corporate media wants these questions to go away.
These questions will never go away unless they are answered substantively and directly. Not answering them has already persuaded a portion of the American electorate to infer the worst possible answer, and continuing to not answer them will only cause that portion of the American electorate to grow.
The autopen scandal has not yet reached the dramatic intensity of Watergate just before Nixon’s resignation in 1974. We do not know if it will reach that intensity, or if there will be fallout from the scandal.
We do know that the questions are real. We do know that the problems are real. That means we know the Biden Administration’s use of the autopen is quite a bit more than “conspiracy theory”. Whether or not we get any other answers regarding this issue, we have already been given that much of an answer.
I’m so glad you’re bringing up this issue again, Peter. It’s so important!
I assume there are many Constitutional scholars and attorneys who are debating this matter, and I hope you will keep us updated. Does a consensus emerge, or a deep division? Will a pathway to righting a wrong emerge, or will a political desire to bury the issue prevail? Does Trump believe his DOJ can actually carve out damage to the Biden administration, or is he just rattling some political cages? Inquiring minds want to know!
Thanks, Magnificent Man!
The real issue, regarding a root cause analysis of this issue, is: Did we have a legitimate government?
If it is verified that Biden did not know what he was signing, it is necessary to void any and all laws created be his autopsy signature.