Everything, perhaps more than everything, you wanted to know about the presidential autopen. From Arjun Singh at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:
The “autopen” is in vogue. On March 17, President Donald Trump announced in a late-night social media post that he would ignore several pardons issued by his predecessor, President Joe Biden, because they were allegedly signed by autopen.
An autopen is a machine that reproduces handwriting. In the case of elected officials, who are expected to sign thousands of official documents on a regular basis, autopens are often used to reproduce their signatures in lieu of them signing each paper by their own hand.
The use of autopens has raised constitutional questions for some after Trump’s accusations of autopen use by Biden. They say that autopen use casts doubt on whether Biden knew the documents were being signed at all, thus implicating their validity.
“I worked in [the White House] for several presidents,” wrote K.T. MacFarland, a former deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first administration, on social platform X. “If Biden himself granted these pardons, there will be paper trail. If not, the guy running autopen machine usurped presidential authority.”
In a Jan. 20 statement that announced the pardons that were later challenged by his successor, Biden stated: “I am exercising my authority under the Constitution to pardon General Mark A. Milley, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Members of Congress and staff who served on the Select Committee, and the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the Select Committee.”
