Trump declares 92% of Biden's documents (executive orders, pardons) signed via autopen "terminated" on November 28 Truth Social post, claiming illegal aide operation without Biden's involvement.
Warns Biden of charges if he denies non-involvement; revives March 2025 probe into autopen use tied to "cognitive decline," despite legal precedents affirming the device's validity since 2005.
Targets EOs on drugs, environment, AI; Democrats call it baseless overreach, as GOP pushes "accountability" without evidence in a House report.
President Donald Trump ignited a fresh political firestorm on Friday, by announcing the immediate termination of virtually all documents signed by his predecessor Joe Biden using an autopen, claiming without evidence that 92% of them were executed illegally by aides who usurped presidential authority. In a blistering Truth Social post, Trump declared: "Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen... is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect," accusing "Radical Left Lunatics" of operating the device without Biden's involvement and warning that any denial from the former president could lead to perjury charges.
The move revives Trump's long-standing obsession with the autopen, a mechanical signature device in use since Thomas Jefferson's era and deemed legal by a 2005 Justice Department opinion under George W. Bush, provided the president authorizes it. Trump, who employed the tool himself during his first term for routine approvals, has repeatedly weaponized it against Biden, first in March 2025 by labeling actions "null and void" and ordering an investigation tied to alleged cognitive decline. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer amplified the rhetoric, hailing the announcement as "accountability" for a "Biden Autopen Presidency," though a GOP report last month offered no proof of unauthorized use.
Democrats and legal experts swiftly dismissed the decree as unconstitutional overreach, noting presidents routinely rescind predecessors' orders but lack unilateral power to retroactively invalidate them based on unproven conspiracy theories. The White House even replaced Biden's portrait with an autopen image on its "Wall of Fame," a jab underscoring the pettiness amid Trump's broader purge of Biden-era actions.
