Trump calls the autopen bluff

[mystery-ak]

November 29, 2025
Trump calls the autopen bluff
By Mike McDaniel

It has been often observed that Donald Trump plays 3D chess while his opponents play checkers. He’s done it again: 

    President Donald Trump announced on Friday he is terminating all documents allegedly signed by former President Joe Biden with the autopen.

    In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed 92% of documents signed during Biden's presidency were done so with the device.



President Trump earlier replaced a portrait of Joe Biden in the White House with a photograph of an autopen:



Hilarious indeed, but it raised a difficult constitutional issue: when is the use of an autopen valid? Certainly, for signing the innumerable letters sent to Americans and others that have no legal effect, and probably even for proclamations in the same category, though most presidents like to use signing such things as public relations events—unless they’re so demented they can’t.

The issue becomes more acute when an autopen is used to sign documents with legal effect such as treaties, laws, executive orders and the like. The Constitution is essentially mute on the issue. Autopens did not exist in the late 1700s. However, the DOJ issued a July 2005 opinion which essentially established:

    The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.

more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/11/trump_calls_the_autopen_bluff.html

[Fishrrman]

"Hilarious indeed, but it raised a difficult constitutional issue: when is the use of an autopen valid? Certainly, for signing the innumerable letters sent to Americans and others that have no legal effect,"

This will go to the Supreme Court, and the sooner the better.
From a post I put up yesterday:
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I sense that the thrust of the president's arguments before the Court will be that in order to be Constitutionally valid, any document that carries the force of Executive power behind it (such as signing a bill from Congress, signing executive orders, signing presidential pardons, signing ANYTHING that will be acted upon on the basis of those powers granted to the president by the Constitution) will require an in-person signature by the president, as verified by witnesses.

I can't speculate as to how the Court will rule regarding presidential documents that were already signed using the autopen. The Court may decline to invalidate them on the basis of "ex post facto". But at the same time bar the use of the autopen for such in the future.
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