Donald Trump said on Tuesday he is terminating all documents, including pardons, that he said his predecessor Joe Biden signed using an autopen – an unprecedented attempt to rollback a previous president’s actions using what legal thinkers view as a flimsy pretext.
The autopen is a device used to replicate a person’s signature with precision, typically for high-volume or ceremonial documents. It has been employed by presidents of both major parties to sign letters and proclamations.
Legal scholars broadly agree the constitution does not require a president to physically sign many documents, including pardons, with their bare hands to make them legally enforceable, according to PolitiFact. Federal law also lacks a mechanism for a president to overturn a previous president’s pardon.
There’s a gap in there – using the autopen for some signingns, sure, why not? But then the gap and then the bureaucracy using the autopen to sign things the President doesn’t know about. And so, in some sense, is not really signing.
So how much of the second as going on? My assumption, simply based upon no knowledge at all but my suspiciions of every bureucracy, ever, is quite a bit. Irrelevant of party or supposed senility too. But maybe that’s just me.
How to find out? Well, a useful first step is to throw the lot ourt and see what can in fact be proven……
Still, Trump is known for decisively taking action that flies in the face of legal precedent and then letting the courts sort it out. Autopens have not faced serious legal challenge until now.
‘Xactly.
At least The Guardian was honest enough to name the source as PolitiFact.
Part and parcel of course was whether old Joe was actually mentally capable at the time.
How much of his decision making could be nullified by his advanced ga-gaism.
Brave move. If Trump succeeds in over turning his predecessors pardons, the Dems will do the same to him only harder.
Alternatively he is making the wise move of setting a legal precedent so that he could use autopen himself without any fear of them later being revoked.