Trump questions Biden’s autopen use

President Donald Trump posted an artificial intelligence-generated photo in March of two official presidential portraits of Trump on each side of a black frame containing a picture of an autopen, in place of former President Joe Biden’s portrait. On Wednesday night, Trump directed the White House counsel and the Justice Department to launch an investigation into whether Biden was truly governing during his presidential term or if aides covered up a cognitive decline and used his signature without his knowledge.

Biden quickly issued a statement claiming he had personally made decisions about his executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. “Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” he said in the statement. “This is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation,” he added, referring to the president’s budget bill.

While Democrats decry what they call an obvious case of political targeting, conservatives hope the investigation will prove what they have alleged for the past several years: Former President Joe Biden was too old to lead and was not aware of his own presidential actions.

“Only Biden would know whether or not he signed it. I was in a debate, and I didn’t think he knew what the [obscenity] he was doing, so it’s a problem,” Trump said in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon. “I know some of the people that used that autopen, and those are not the people that had the same ideology as Joe Biden. These were radical Left lunatics, and they didn’t get elected. He didn’t get elected either, actually.”

The investigation is the latest escalation in criticism around Biden’s presidency. Last month, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson released Original Sin, a book that claims aides covered up Biden’s physical decline and insulated him from the rest of the White House and from his own polling. Also in May, Axios released audio of October 2023 interviews between Biden and special counsel Robert Hur. At the time, Hur was investigating the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s private residences and offices. He released a report that declined to charge Biden but said the former president forgot several key details and lost track of their conversations. The released audio appears to confirm Hur’s assessment of Biden as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

Earlier this week, Fox News anchor Peter Doocy held up papers in the White House press briefing room that appeared to show identical, neat signatures on Biden executive orders. He then displayed another order pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, of any potential crimes with a signature that looked different and more natural. In response to Doocy, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said an autopen ran the country during the Biden administration.

If so, the unanswered question is, who held the autopen?

The autopen machine uses an automated arm to sign documents, especially in cases where many signatures are required, such as letters, diplomas, and books. An early version of the device was first patented in 1803, and former President Thomas Jefferson was one of the first to purchase it. A 1968 National Enquirer article on the autopen featured a photo of President Lyndon B. Johnson with the machine, and even Trump has signed his name with it before.

Its use in the White House is largely unregulated. “President Trump’s announcement that the Justice Department is investigating this matter is very welcome news,” said Kyle Brosnan, chief counsel for the Oversight Project.

The Oversight Project, formerly housed under the Heritage Foundation, has been investigating autopen usage during the Biden administration for years and claims to have found evidence that aides used it without Biden’s knowledge. While it is standard for staff to use an autopen to sign hundreds of letters on behalf of the president, Brosnan says there should be a paper trail that proves the president authorized his signature and only for certain types of documents.

“There should be logs of when it was used. Access and control of that device historically has been reserved for a very tightly controlled group of people,” Brosnan told WORLD. “But the Biden White House’s autopen was being used to exercise a power that exists only with one person and one person alone, the president of the United States.”

Of top concern is the presidential pardon authority. Ed Martin is currently the associate deputy attorney general, weaponization czar, and U.S. pardon attorney. Before taking office, he said that he would scrutinize pardons that Biden issued.

While use of an autopen on a pardon is not explicitly illegal, according to Brosnan, it should be, or there should at least be records stored to prove the president approved autopen use.

“Where was the authorization from that signature?” Brosnan said. “And especially in the case of President Biden, did he have the capacity to authorize those pardons given his clear, obvious mental decline while in office?”

The debate has little historical precedent, according to University of Dayton political science professor Christopher Devine. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke and first lady Edith Wilson managed the White House and access to her husband. But many Americans did not know about this until years later. And it is not known whether she signed any documents in Wilson’s name.

“It’s easy to lose sight of how strange some of the things are that are happening these days—for a sitting president to accuse or at least suggest that the previous president was replaced at some point by some stand-in that was not him is pretty bizarre,” Devine told WORLD. “It’s something out of a movie to even think of such a thing.”

When Trump faced prosecution as a former president for classified documents found at his private home and for an alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, he claimed political persecution. Now that he’s launching an investigation into his predecessor, the political boomerang is unavoidable.

“Obviously it’s paired together with what are some really serious concerns about what Joe Biden’s capabilities were as president,” Devine said. “But the specific accusation frankly seems less like a serious investigation than just an opportunity to pile on Joe Biden after he’s left office.”

Should the investigation uncover aides that misused Biden’s signature, there is little direction in the Constitution on what to do about those documents.

“If there was a law that was apparently signed by the president but wasn’t actually signed by the president and without the president’s approval, is that actually a law? I think that’s a pretty complex question and it would probably come down to a lot of details about it,” Devine said.

Even so, he said the process for overturning laws would be complicated. He expects it more likely that the administration will interview and release suspected aides it believes used the autopen.

But, if aides used Biden’s signature without his knowledge, Brosnan said it would amount to a coup d’etat.

“Getting to the bottom of it is very important to inform whether or not we need to reform the 25th Amendment,” he said. “It’s a very important, at a minimum, historical analysis, because the American people have a right to know who was running the country for the last four years.”

“It might be more a matter of legal sanction than actually changing policy,” Devine said. “But some of this depends on what the end goal is for the administration. Are they really trying to go after policy here, or is what's going on more about targeting political opponents?”

Democrats claim the latter. Both Martin and Attorney General Pam Bondi have publicly accused Biden of mental incapacity in the past. Furthermore, Trump has not appointed a special counsel, like Biden did for any investigations involving himself or Trump. Following Trump’s announcement, Martin posted to X, “On it, Sir. We will get to the bottom of it all.”

Martin did not respond to WORLD’s request for comment.