President Donald Trump speaks during the signing of an executive order in the Oval Office on February 11, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump said Friday he would seek to repeal any laws, pardons or orders still in effect that former President Joe Biden signed with an autopen, although it was not immediately clear how that would work or whether it would be legal.
Trump explained in a social media post that all documents signed by Biden with the autopen are “hereby invalidated and of no further force or effect.”
“I hereby cancel all executive orders and anything else not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden because the people who operated the autopen did so illegally,” Trump claimed. “Joe Biden was not involved in the autopen process and if he claims he was, he will be charged with perjury. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for the list of documents that Trump believes he has the ability to revoke because of the way they were signed.
States Newsroom also asked the Trump administration whether officials believe the president would have to sign an executive order to implement his social media post.
Experts dismissed previous autopen challenges
The post was similar to one Trump released in March When he claimed that all the pardons signed by Biden with the autopen were invalid, legal experts at the time said something was “absurd” and a “red herring.”
Trump again expressed frustration with the employ of autopen in June when he ordered The White House counsel and the U.S. attorney general should investigate when and why Biden administration staffers used an autopen.
Trump said during an appearance in the Oval Office at the time that he had found no evidence that Biden’s aides had broken the law.
“No, but I discovered the human spirit,” Trump said. “I found myself in a debate with the human mind and I didn’t think he knew what the hell he was doing. So it’s one of those things, one of those problems. We can never allow something like that to happen to our country.”
Biden and spokesmen who work for him have repeatedly said he knows what official documents would be signed on his behalf and denied claims that White House staff used the autopen without his authorization or knowledge.
Biden released a statement in June after the Trump memorandum in which he said the investigation was “nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress as they work to advance disastrous legislation that would cut critical programs like Medicaid and increase costs for American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the super-rich and big corporations.”
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about pardons, executive orders, laws and proclamations,” Biden wrote at the time. “Any suggestion I didn’t make is ridiculous and wrong.”
While presidents have routinely repealed their predecessors’ executive orders, usually within their first days or weeks in office, Congress would most likely have to act to amend or eliminate any laws that Biden signed with an autopen. Trump’s attempt to unilaterally repeal a law or part of a law would likely lead to a legal battle over whether he has that power.
Trump does not invoke legal authority
It also wasn’t immediately clear what legal authority he believes Trump has as president to reverse pardons if Biden were to sign the documents with an autopen.
David Super, a professor of constitutional and administrative law at Georgetown University, told States Newsroom in March that “the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says that the president has the power to pardon.”
“So if President Biden wanted to just verbally tell someone that he was pardoned, he could do that. It wouldn’t have to be in writing at all,” he said. “Administratively, of course we want things in writing. That makes things a lot easier, but there is no constitutional obligation.”
Ashley Murray contributed to this report.
