I Really Do Hate To Say ‘I Told You So’ – Update for December 4, 2025

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TRUMP TRIES TO VOID BIDEN CLEMENCIES

On Tuesday, I warned that President Trump wrote last week on the inaptly-named “Truth Social” that he considered “[a]ny document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them,” to be of “no further force or effect.” Trump said he was overturning all the executive orders under the Biden administration and “anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden.”

I speculated that “anything else” might include clemencies, but that Trump had not yet tried to void any of them. But that was Tuesday morning. On Tuesday night, Trump ranted on Truth Social that he had voided all pardons and commutations that were signed by his predecessor, President Joe Biden, with an autopen:

Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts, signed by Order of the now infamous and unauthorized “AUTOPEN,” within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect. Anyone receiving “Pardons,” “Commutations,” or any other Legal Document so signed, please be advised that said Document has been fully and completely terminated, and is of no Legal effect. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Trump has repeatedly claimed without citing any evidence that Biden’s use of the autopen, a mechanical device that allows signatures without a person using their hand, resulted from the former president’s physical and mental frailty. Biden issued a record 4,245 acts of clemency during his four years in office, more than any other US president since the start of the 20th century, according to the non-partisan Pew Research Center. It is not known whether Biden used an autopen to sign pardons.

Before leaving office in January, Biden issued several pardons — including for family members he said he wanted to shield from politically motivated investigations — and commuted sentences for a number of nonviolent drug offenders. Trump, known for his criticism of political rivals, has repeatedly seized on Biden’s use of the autopen to sign official documents during his presidency.

Most of the clemencies were commutations rather than pardons. Biden only issued 80 individual pardons, but he did issue “pardons by proclamation” which affected entire classes of people. The pardons by proclamation included one for former military service members convicted of violating a ban on gay sex and people convicted of certain federal marijuana nontrafficking offenses.

David Super, a constitutional and administrative law professor at Georgetown University, told Government Executive last spring that “the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says the president has the power to pardon.”

“So if President Biden wanted to simply verbally tell someone they’re pardoned, he could do that. It wouldn’t have to be in writing at all,” he said. “Administratively, of course, we want things in writing. It makes things a lot simpler, but there’s no constitutional requirement.”

If Trump were to try to prosecute or arrest someone who received clemency in order to return them to prison, legal experts predict the actions would be unlikely to stand. “I can’t imagine the court saying that it wasn’t a valid pardon because of the autopen issue,” says Stanford University Law School professor Bernadette Meyler. “Biden made statements regarding these pardons, so it would be hard to show that they weren’t a decision of the President.”

Of course, as he has already demonstrated, Trump is unlikely to shrink from trying to reimprison someone simply because no one believes his power extends to such an action.

Newsweek, Trump Says All Pardons, Commutations Signed by Biden Autopen ‘Terminated’ (December 2, 2025)

Government Executive, Trump says he is voiding Biden executive actions signed with autopen (December 1, 2025)

Time, Why Trump Can’t ‘Void’ Biden’s Pardons Because of Autopen (March 17, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root