United States President Donald Trump has said that he will throw out all executive orders issued under predecessor Joe Biden that he believes were signed using an autopen, pushing a dubious claim to delegitimise Democratic policies.
In a social media post on Friday, Trump, a Republican, estimated that the majority of Biden’s orders were executed with autopen, a machine that mimics a given signature.
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“Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect,” Trump wrote.
Trump has long maintained that Biden — who was 82 when he left office in January — was not in control of the executive office due to his advanced age and declining mental state.
The Republican leader, himself 79 years old, reiterated that message in Friday’s post and threatened to prosecute Biden if the Democrat denied it.
“I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally,” Trump said.
“Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury.”
The autopen and similar mechanical signature devices have a long history in the White House, stretching back to the third US president, Thomas Jefferson, in the early 19th century. Trump himself has used the device, particularly during his first term.
But Trump has had an acrimonious relationship with his Democratic predecessors, including Biden and former President Barack Obama.
He has trolled Biden in particular for his age and his use of the autopen while in office. After setting up a “presidential walk of fame” near the White House Rose Garden earlier this year, Trump replaced Biden’s portrait with a picture of the mechanical device.
He recently showed off the picture to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a visit this month.
Biden and Trump faced each other twice in presidential elections: once in 2020, when Trump lost, and once in 2024, when Biden dropped out of the race. Trump ultimately won the latter.
He has also consistently denied his defeat in the 2020 election, falsely claiming widespread voter fraud.
Trump has made other misleading and unfounded statements about Biden, including that White House staffers took advantage of the Democrat’s declining age to sign policy documents without his knowledge.
There is, however, no definitive proof that the autopen was used under Biden without his consent. Biden himself denied the allegation in a June statement.
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,” he wrote. “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
Nevertheless, Trump revisited that allegation in Friday’s message on his platform Truth Social.
“The Radical Left Lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him,” the Republican leader wrote.
Friday’s announcement is the latest effort by Trump to frame the actions of his political rivals as illegitimate.
In March, for instance, Trump posted a Truth Social message attempting to invalidate the pardons Biden issued before his departure from the White House.
Biden had controversially awarded “preemptive” pardons to politicians who served on a House select committee investigating Trump for his actions on January 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the US Capitol.
“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, and OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” Trump wrote in March, reiterating familiar claims.
“Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!”
Legal experts largely dismissed the president’s post at the time as unconstitutional, as US law does not require presidential pardons to be signed in any given way — or even that they be written down.
A 2005 memo from the US Office of Legal Counsel also explains, “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.”
It adds that using an autopen to “affix the President’s signature” to legislation — or “directing a subordinate” to do so — is considered acceptable.
Still, Biden did face significant public concern about whether his age had hindered his ability to carry out his duties, particularly in the final years of his four-year term.
A disastrous performance in the June 2024 presidential debate heightened those concerns, as Biden appeared stiff and struggled to maintain his train of thought.
Members of the Democratic Party afterwards pressured Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, a step he eventually took in July of that year.
Some critics have speculated whether Biden’s age diminished his ability to dedicate time and attention to areas such as foreign policy, giving senior staff members greater influence over policymaking.
This year, Biden revealed he had advanced prostate cancer, and he is currently undergoing radiation therapy.
Should Trump complete his second term, he will also be 82 years old, a few months older than Biden was at the end of his presidential term. Concerns about age and mental health have also dogged Trump’s time in the White House.
Just this week, The New York Times ran an article titled, “Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office”. It detailed instances where Trump appeared to fall asleep during public appearances and described how Trump has limited his public appearances during his second term.
Trump responded on social media by calling the female reporter on the story “ugly” and posting that he had “aced” his physical and cognitive exams.
