President Donald Trump continued his unfounded tirade against Joe Biden’s use of the autopen after a Truth Social rampage on Tuesday.
After struggling to stay awake during his own Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump, 79, fired up his social media platform to revive a familiar attack on his predecessor’s faculties, while declaring all actions signed into law by Joe Biden’s “autopen” void.
“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,” he wrote.
Trump claims Biden’s inner circle made decisions for the then-president and used an autopen to replicate his signature to sign them into law.
He continued: “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!”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for clarification on what orders Trump believes were signed by autopen.
Trump’s post echoes another message he fired off on Friday, when he threatened to charge Biden, 82, over his use of the autopen.
Trump claimed, without evidence, that 92 percent of the documents signed by “Sleepy Joe” were done using the autopen, and claimed that he was canceling all executive orders that weren’t directly signed by “Crooked Joe Biden.”
“Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury,” he wrote.
The Justice Department under the George W. Bush administration said in 2005 that using an autopen is fully legal. Trump has used it himself, though he says “only for very unimportant papers.”
Moreover, legal scholars agree that the Constitution doesn’t require a president to physically sign many documents— pardons included—and that the constitution provides no mechanism to overturn a predecessor’s pardons, PolitiFact reported.
During his presidency, Biden issued 80 pardons and 4,165 commutations, according to Pew Research Center.
In his final days in office, he controversially issued pardons to several family members who he wanted to protect from political retribution.
Trump, who put a gold-framed photo of an autopen in the White House’s Presidential Walk of Fame, has frequently mocked his predecessor’s cognitive decline in office.
Yet he has himself drawn increasing comparisons to Biden, as he delivers at times incoherent speeches and suffers frequent mental gaffes.
On Tuesday, however, Trump said he felt “sharper” than he had in decades during a rambling 30-minute tirade.
“I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago, but who the hell does? I took, by the way, I took my physical. I got all A’s, everything,” he bragged.
As he spoke, the president’s bruised hand was covered with a glob of makeup. The White House has attributed the bruise to constant hand shaking while taking aspirin as part of his preventive routine.
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