Trump renews attacks on Biden autopen pardons, claims he ‘never gave the orders’
President Donald Trump renewed his criticism against former President Joe Biden and his administration over the use of an autopen to sign off on important orders — including pardons — during Biden’s tenure in the White House.
Trump has railed against Biden’s use of the autopen for months, claiming thousands of pardons Biden signed were void and that the former president did not know what documents he was signing through the automated device.
‘It was illegally used. He never gave the orders,’ Trump told reporters Thursday during a trip to the U.K. ‘He never told them what to do. And I guess the only one he signed, or one of the few he signed, was the pardon for his son.’
A spokesperson for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
A White House official previously told Fox News Digital that Trump uses his hand signature for every legally operational or binding document. Even so, Trump has admitted that he uses an autopen for letters.
Meanwhile, Biden’s chief of staff issued final approval for multiple high-profile preemptive pardons during Biden’s final days in office, the New York Times reported in July.
Although Biden reportedly made the decision about the pardons in a meeting, Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients is the one who gave final approval for the use of the autopen — at least in the case of former chief medical advisor to the president, Anthony Fauci, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, the Times reported.
Even so, Biden told the Times that he made every clemency decision of his own accord.
Meanwhile, Trump’s comments come as Zients is slated to appear before the House Oversight Committee Thursday for its probe into Biden’s mental acuity. Part of that investigation is also examining if the former president was fully cognizant of clemency orders and executive actions he signed using the autopen.
Biden granted a total of 4,245 acts of clemency during his administration, 96% of which were granted during his final months in office between October 2024 and January 2025, according to the Pew Research Center.
An autopen is a machine that physically holds a pen and follows programming to imitate a person’s signature.
Unlike a stamp or a digitized print of a signature, the autopen has the capability to hold various types of pens, from a ballpoint to a permanent marker, according to descriptions of autopen machines for sale online.
Fox News’ Liz Elkind contributed to this report.
