President Donald Trump slammed Joe Biden’s defense when it comes to using the autopen, saying of the former president: ‘he knew nothing.’
‘In my opinion, the autopen issue might be one of the largest scandals we’ve seen in the last 50-100 years. It’s a significant scandal,’ Trump remarked to reporters in the Oval Office. ‘I assure you, he had no idea about what he was signing. I promise you.’
Trump was questioned about Biden’s interview with the New York Times, where the former president accused Trump and other Republicans of being ‘liars’ for alleging that his assistants used an autopen without his consent.
However, the president acknowledged that his own administration also employs the autopen. Nevertheless, Trump emphasized that it was not used to sign legislation, but rather to add his signature to letters sent to Americans.
‘You know what the auto pen is supposed to do? Sign thousands of letters from young people that write. I get, we get thousands of letters a week,’ Trump said. ‘There’s a room where we have many, many people working, responding and sending letters back. That’s what an auto pen’s supposed to be.’
He added: ‘It’s not supposed to be for signing major legislation and all of the things.’
Trump and many Republicans argue the use of the autopen proves Biden was mentally incapacitated while in office. But many presidents use the electronic signature, including Barack Obama.
The president expounded on the idea at a later event, calling it a ‘scandal’ the country was ‘run by an autopen’ when Biden was president.
President Donald Trump – with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte – said it was a ‘scandal’ that Joe Biden used the autopen in office
‘We were run by an autopen, and nobody knows who used it. I think it’s one of the biggest scandals the history of our country,’ he said.
Trump also claimed that Biden’s aides signed legislation without Biden’s knowledge, which the former president has denied.
‘Nobody has any idea who used it, including Biden,’ Trump said. ‘It’s very terrible … an evil group of people, and they’re very smart, very smart. He’s not, but they are. They took over the Oval Office. They actually took over the Oval Office. We can never let anything like that happen again.’
Biden told the New York Times that he ‘made every decision’ and his staff only used the autopen at his order.
‘I made every decision,’ Biden, adding that he had his staff use the electronic signature because ‘we’re talking about a whole lot of people.
His decision to speak out on the issue comes after Republicans have spent months demonizing the autopen’s usage and questioning whether Biden was ever even aware of the decisions being made.
‘This is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans,’ Biden said of the attacks.
The autopen is an electronic pen that replicates a person’s signature. The courts have ruled it’s legal for a public official to use one in their government duties.
But Trump has argued the use of the autopen invalidates Biden’s orders. And he’s claimed that Biden aides wielded the pen without the then-president’s knowledge.
President Joe Biden signs a presidential memorandum in November 2023
Republicans in Congress have hauled Biden’s aides before the Oversight Committee, to discuss Biden’s mental capacities and actions they took in office, including using the autopen.
Additionally, the Justice Department – under an executive order from Trump – has launched a probe into the Biden administration’s use of the pen.
Under Trump’s order, all of the pardons, clemency grants, executive orders, presidential memoranda, and other presidential policy decisions issued by Biden will be investigated.
During his time in office, Biden was pictured signing some orders while in office, including ones on the use of AI and on gun safety issues.
But it’s unclear if there were documents from the Biden administration that were signed by the then-president or may have been signed by an electronic pen.
Actions under review would include Biden’s pardons for son Hunter and other family members and orders related to a variety of areas including education, immigration, health care, climate change and more.
As part of the DoJ investigation, tens of thousands of emails from the Biden administration between November 2024 and January 2025 have been turned over by the National Archives, a source told The New York Times.
These emails contain keywords like ‘clemency’, ‘pardon’ or ‘commutation’, and could be the key to determining how each pardon came about and Biden’s involvement.
They appear to show that White House staffers ran details of each clemency grant by Biden for a final check before they were made public.
On some occasions, draft announcements had to be tweaked after Biden read them because of his last-minute feedback.
These could not be released until an aide confirmed Biden had approved the final wording.
At the end of his term, Biden reduced the sentences of nearly 4,000 federal convicts.
Biden said he made ‘every decision’, but revealed when it came to large groups of people, he did not individually approve the names of every single person he pardoned during his final months in the White House.
Instead, he signed off on the criteria and standards he wanted to be used to determine which criminals received reduced sentences. This placed offenders into categories, some of which were issued sweeping pardons.
The ailing 82-year-old, who is battling prostate cancer , revealed he instructed staffers to use an autopen to grant sweeping pardons on his behalf because there were simply too many for him to sign by hand
He also pre-emptively pardoned politically prominent people he considered potential targets of Trump for criminal investigations, including members of Congress, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members of his own family.
Biden told the New York Times that he consciously made the decisions to pardon those figures because he didn’t want them to have rack up legal fees should Trump send his Justice Department after them.
‘Everybody knows how vindictive he is, so we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now,’ Biden said, adding: ‘I consciously made all those decisions.’
But the only pardon he signed with his own hand was the one for his son, Hunter Biden.
