US President Donald Trump once again attacked the legitimacy of the actions carried out during Joe Biden’s term, declaring null and void all documents supposedly signed with a automatic pen.
“Any and all documents, proclamations, executive orders, memorandums or contracts, signed by order of the now infamous and unauthorized ‘AUTOPEN,’ within the administration of , are hereby null and void, of no force or effect whatsoever,” Trump wrote in Truth Social.
“Anyone who has received ‘Pardons’, ‘Commutations’ or any other Legal Document signed in this manner should be aware that said Document has been fully and completely terminated and no longer has legal effect,” he added.
It is unclear which documents the president is referring to, and the White House has not made available a list of the specific actions and orders affected.
Annulling a pardon would be an unprecedented political retaliation maneuver and something for which there is no foundation in the Constitution or current legislation.
The made a similar claim last week, declaring in a post on Truth Social that it was “cancelling all executive orders and anything else that has not been directly signed” by Biden.
The Republican leader has fixed for a long time in Biden’s use of the automatic pen.
In March, he reinforced the idea that his use of the tool to sign documents demonstrated that he was not in charge while in the White House and that his actions were “null and void.”
In 2005, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (under Republican President George W. Bush) conducted an extensive review of the legality of the president’s use of the automatic pen.
The conclusion was that “the president does not need to personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill to sign it under Article I, Section 7.”
