Donald Trump cancels all orders signed by Joe Biden with Autopen device and threatens former president with indictment for 'perjury'
US President Donald Trump. Photo credit: Evan Vucci / AP / Profimedia
Current US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he has rescinded all presidential executive orders of the former Democratic administration that were not directly signed by Joe Biden. The Republican claims that his Democratic predecessor did not authorize the use of the automatic signature system and that if he says otherwise, he will be “indicted for perjury.”
Trump claims that the Autopen, a mechanical device that reproduces signatures, was used for 92% of the presidential documents signed during Joe Biden's term.
“Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with an Autopen, which is about 92% of them, is hereby canceled and is no longer of any effect or validity. No Autopen is permitted to be used unless specifically authorized by the President of the United States,” the Republican said in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, on Friday.
The Autopen device, a mechanism with a real pen that signs on paper using a handwriting template, reproduces a person's signature automatically and with high accuracy. The US government has been using this system since the Truman administration (1945-1953), according to Fox News.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel had confirmed that use of the device is legal for presidential signatures on legislation and executive acts as long as it is authorized by the president.
However, Donald Trump claims that Joe Biden did not authorize the use of the Autopen, threatening the Democrat with indictment for “perjury” if he says otherwise.
“The radical leftist lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute desk in the Oval Office have taken his Presidency. I hereby rescind all executive orders and anything else not signed directly by Corrupt Joe Biden because the people who operated the Autopen did it illegally. Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and if he says he was, he will be impeached for perjury,” Donald Trump concluded.
162 executive orders signed by Joe Biden
During his presidency, Joe Biden signed 162 executive orders, in addition to hundreds of memoranda, proclamations, and notices. Although in January, when he returned to the White House, Donald Trump repealed almost 80 orders from the period of his predecessor, some of them appear to have remained in force and could be among those canceled now, notes Fox News.
CBS News writes that it is unclear how many of Joe Biden's orders were signed with Autopen, but that it is not unusual for a president to rescind his predecessor's directives.
Trump had previously ordered an investigation into Joe Biden's use of a pen to sign certain presidential documents, such as pardons, claiming there was a “conspiracy” to “abuse presidential signature power by using a pen to hide Biden's cognitive decline.”
In a statement in July, Biden dismissed Trump's claims as “nothing more than a distraction.”
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions on pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false,” the former US president said.
