Former President Joe Biden’s consistent use of an autopen e-signature during his presidency has become the talk of Washington, after a Heritage Oversight Project report called into question the validity and legal standing of Biden’s actions.
An autopen, or signing machine, is a device that reproduces a signature without the signatory having to be present.
“He signs by autopen,” said President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday.
“Who was signing all this stuff by autopen? Who would think you’d sign important documents by autopen? You know, these are major documents … . Nobody’s ever heard of such a thing. So, it should have never happened.”
President Trump raises questions about who was in control of the Biden White House: “Who was signing all this stuff? These are major documents. Almost everything was signed by autopen. Nobody has ever heard of such a thing. It should have never happened.” pic.twitter.com/h8SyH2qQYz
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) March 13, 2025
The Heritage Foundation’s report found that the vast majority of documents signed by Biden while in office employed an autopen.
That includes Biden’s last-minute pardons of his family members, Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, and the members of the Jan. 6 Committee.
“We gathered every document we could find with Biden’s signature over the course of his presidency,” reads a Heritage Oversight post on X.
“All used the same autopen signature except for the announcement that the former president was dropping out of the race last year.”
?Biden Autopen Pardons on VACATION??
Who is behind this autopen on 12/30/2022 that pardoned six criminals (with the exact same autopen signature) while Joe Biden was vacationing and golfing in the U.S. Virgin Islands?
Note they all say they are “Signed in the City of… https://t.co/b0SEtalm4N pic.twitter.com/dN7BbVOiVj
— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) March 10, 2025
The report also found that some of the autopen-signed documents “pardoned six criminals (with the exact same autopen signature) while Joe Biden was vacationing and golfing in the U.S. Virgin Islands.”
These documents all say that they were signed “at the city of Washington.”
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, took to X, humorously writing, “Autopen autocrat … Delaware Despot … Rehoboth Robot.”
Asked by The Daily Signal whether he found the report’s findings significant, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., replied, “I think it is. I don’t have all the information on it, but it’s—we all use autopens for different things, but to sign legislation, presidential executive orders, that type of thing, that’s troubling.”
Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., however, rejected the significance of the study.
“That’s a pretty standard process in a lot of offices,” he said.
But Mike Howell, executive director of Heritage’s Oversight Project, says that Biden’s consistent use of an autopen is far different than a senator using it.
“No president has ever used the autopen so prolifically as President Biden,” Howell said.
“We’re trying to figure out who was actually exercising the authority of the president. And it appears that the autopen was used as a device to hide the responsibility from the American people,” he said.
“It’s functionally and categorically different for a senator to use an autopen to send a thank-you note to the Girl Scouts than it is for a staffer at the White House to use the autopen instead of the president’s authority to sign a pardon.”
Howell added: “Only the President of the United States can sign a pardon. And the question remains whether Biden even had the cognitive ability to delegate his signature authority. Additionally, whether it’s even legal to do that for documents that only the presidents can sign.”
When asked, Howell said he’s hoping that this question is litigated in the courts.
“Absolutely I am,” he said.
“I think that the January 6th committee members and staff and Gen. Milley and others, they have some funky pardons that are about as valid as a three-dollar bill. And Congress and others … need to figure out who is actually the president over the last four years.”
