United States President Donald Trump says he has rescinded all amnesties and changes signed by his predecessor, Joe Biden, including AutoPen.
“Any and all documents, proclamations, executive orders, memorandums or agreements signed by the order of the infamous and unauthorized ‘autopen’ in the administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. are hereby null, void and of no further force or effect,” Truth wrote on his social media platform Tuesday evening.
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“Anyone receiving a waiver, ‘commutation,’ or any other legal document signed in this manner, please be advised that the document is completely and utterly terminated and has no legal effect,” he said.
However, legal experts say that this step of the US President is not enforceable.
So, what documents did Biden sign with AutoPen, who will be affected, and is Trump’s move legal?
What documents did Biden sign with his autopen?
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Biden’s use of an autopen, a mechanical device that allows a person to sign without using one’s hands, was a reflection of the former president’s physical and mental infirmity.
According to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, Biden issued a record 4,245 pardons during his four years in office, more than any other US president since the turn of the 20th century.
Most of these were commutations or commutations of sentences. Biden issued only 80 individual pardons, the second-fewest number during the same period, but he was better known for issuing “pardons by proclamation,” which affected the entire class.
According to the Pew Research Center, this includes amnesty by proclamation for former military service members convicted of violating the same-sex ban, which has since been rescinded, and for people convicted of certain federal marijuana offenses.
But it’s not clear how many, and which, of Biden’s pardons and commutations were signed using an autopen.
Is Trump’s move legal?
Bernadette Miller, an expert on US and United Kingdom constitutional law at Stanford University, told Al Jazeera that Trump does not have the power to reverse the pardon or commutation.
“This declaration has no legal effect. Any laws or waivers signed by Autopen will remain valid. The only exception would be an executive order that would only be in effect until revoked by the same or another president,” she told Al Jazeera by email.
“Those orders can be undone by Trump, so potentially, this statement would undo any such orders. But the pardons and the laws are valid.”
PolitiFact, a fact-checking website based at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, independently found that “there is no constitutional mechanism to revoke a pardon, and an 1869 court decision found that a pardon once granted is final”.
The U.S. Constitution also does not specify whether pardons must be signed by hand, PolitiFact said on its website.
Who can be affected by this decision of Trump?
Trump has previously insisted that Autopen signed off on a series of “premature” pardons issued by Biden to US lawmakers investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
A mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to block Biden’s certification as Speaker of Congress, claiming the 2020 election was stolen. Trump and his allies have repeatedly failed to commit massive election fraud.
The US president and his Republican allies who choose to investigate Trump, such as former congressmen Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, see him as a traitor to his movement.
In March, Trump said on the Truth Social that the pardons for these lawmakers were “void, empty, and of no more force or effect, because they were done by Autopen.”
Was Biden the first to use an autopen?
According to PolitiFact, Biden was not the only US president to rely on AutoPen.
Similar devices have been used throughout US history, although as technology has advanced, so has the appearance of autopens.
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, used what was known as the polygraph: a device with two pens designed so that the second could copy the action of the first.
In the early 1960s, John F. Kennedy used a more modern version of the Autopen. More recently, Barack Obama used AutoPens on a few occasions.
PolitiFact also found two legal memos from 1929 and 2005 that do not require US presidents to sign documents by hand.