President Trump on Friday suggested former President Biden’s signature on some official White House documents were not valid because of Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline in recent years and the apparent use of an autopen.
Many executive orders signed by Mr. Biden were approved with an autopen device, prompting questions about whether Mr. Biden was fully mindful of what was signed during his presidency.
“Crooked Joe Biden got us into a real mess with Russia and everything else he did, frankly, but he didn’t know about it, generally speaking, he signed it with an autopen,” he said in his remarks at the Justice Department headquarters in Washington.
“So how would he know that autopen is a big deal. … Who’s doing this? When my people come up, [and say], ’Sir, this is an executive order.’ They explain it to me. And 90% of the time I sign it and 99% of the time, I say, ’do it,’ but they come up and I sign it, but you don’t use autopen.”
The president said that using autopen is “disrespectful to the office” and “maybe it’s not even valid, because, you know, who’s getting [Mr. Biden] to sign? He had no idea what the hell he was doing,” Mr. Trump said.
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project first found the situation related to Mr. Biden’s use of the autopen that led to Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asking about the legitimacy of executive orders Mr. Biden signed, given concerns about his cognitive decline in recent years.
“I am demanding the DOJ investigate whether President Biden’s cognitive decline allowed unelected staff to push through radical policy without his knowing approval,” Mr. Bailey said.
Autopen signatures are created by machine as opposed to being done by hand. Many presidents going back over half a century are believed to have leaned on the modern autopen.
Heritage’s Oversight Project investigators say that to determine whether Mr. Biden, 82, actually ordered the signature of relevant legal documents, or if he even had the mental capacity to, they must learn who controlled the autopen and what checks were in place.
The Heritage Foundation’s investigators noted the time when House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, retold a story about Mr. Biden not remembering that he signed an executive order pausing exports of liquefied natural gas.
“So, who signed it? For investigators to determine whether then-President Biden actually ordered the signature of relevant legal documents, or if he even had the mental capacity to, they must first determine who controlled the autopen and what checks there were in place,” investigators said.
“We gathered every document we could find with Biden’s signature over the course of his presidency,” the Oversight Project said. “All used the same autopen signature except for the announcement that the former president was dropping out of the race last year.”
The Oversight Project showed two examples of Mr. Biden’s signatures from separate executive orders that it gathered came from autopen and contrasted that with an image of his signature on the letter announcing he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election.
His signature on the two executive orders appears identical, while the signature on the letter about leaving the 2024 election had some differences. That included the lack of a “Jr.” at the end of his name because he signed it only as “J.R. Biden.”
