March 17 (UPI) — President Donald Trump claimed Monday that preemptive pardons granted by former President Joe Biden to members of the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol are not valid because they were allegedly signed with an autopen.
In a post to his Truth Social account, Trump wrote that pardons issued by Biden to the committee, among others, “are hereby declared void, vacant, and of no further force or effect, because of the fact that they were done by autopen.”
He then alleged that Biden didn’t know about or authorize the pardons, and that the committee members “should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level.”
An autopen is a device that was patented in the early 19th century and is used to reproduce handwritten signatures. Harry Truman was the first president to use autopen, but Barack Obama became the first president to use an autopen for legislation in 2011.
It was under the administration of George W. Bush in 2005 that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that “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.”
In for precedence of the power to pardon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit wrote in a 2024 decision that regarding whether a writing “is required as part of the President’s exercise of the clemency power.
The answer is undoubtedly no,” and that “we readily determine that nothing in the Constitution restricts the President’s exercise of the clemency power to commutations that have been rendered through a documented writing,” the court wrote.
However, that particular case argued whether a pardon allegedly granted during Trump’s first term during a phone call could stand, but as there is no documented pardon at all, the individual Trump called remains in custody with a petition for clemency still “pending.”
The status regarding anyone who received a preemptive pardon remained unchanged Monday.
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