Legal experts say there is nothing to President Donald Trump’s claims that several of former President Joe Biden’s pardons are “VOID” because they were signed via autopen.
White House lawyers during the George W. Bush administration said the use of an autopen is perfectly legal, and constitutional scholars say that nothing in the Constitution even requires pardons to be signed anyway. And, they note, pardons cannot simply be overturned by a subsequent president.
Trump is correct that pardons would be invalid if, in fact, as he has claimed, any pardons were signed by a staffer without Biden’s knowledge or consent. But Trump has offered no evidence of that.