President Trump claimed that former president Biden’s pardons for members of the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attacks are “void” and “vacant,” because they were signed using an autopen, a device that reproduces signatures.
In one of his final acts as president, Biden granted preemptive pardons to members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Biden said the move was intended to protect the House committee members from potential retaliation under a second Trump administration.
“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late Sunday night.
While a president has Constitutional authority to issue pardons, there is no power for the subsequent president to undo them for any reason.
A 2005 memo from the Justice Department, issued during George W. Bush’s presidency, said that using an autopen to sign official documents is legal, and the practice is now widely used. President Obama was the first to sign a bill using an autopen in 2011.
In his social media post, Trump claimed that members of the House committee are “subject to investigation at the highest level” and falsely accused them of arranging their own pardons without Biden’s knowledge.
California Senator Adam Schiff, who served on the committee, said in a post on X on Monday that he and members of the committee won’t be intimidated by Trump’s threats regarding Biden’s pardons.
“The members of the Jan. 6 Committee are all proud of our work,” Schiff wrote. “Your threats will not intimidate us. Or silence us.”
Former Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger, who also served on the committee, responded to Trump’s comments with a gif on X saying, “bring it on b––.”
“Trump is threatening the Jan. 6 committee again… He’s obsessed. He’s more obsessed with like, me and Liz Cheney than his freaking golf score. Hey, Trump, bring it on, dude,” Kinzinger said in a video posted to X.
During a White House press conference Monday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump simply questioned Biden’s awareness of the pardons he granted.
“The President was raising the point that, did [Biden] even know about these pardons? Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge?” Leavitt said.
The president’s remarks followed a post on X last week by The Oversight Project, a branch of The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, which questioned whether Biden had the “mental capacity” to authorize the documents.
On his first day in office, Trump granted pardons to nearly 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and commuted the sentences of 14 supporters, including members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
Alyssa Vega can be reached at [email protected].
