By 'state', you mean the state of being?
Posted on 06/02/2025 7:51:14 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
The Heritage Foundation claims that, “Biden’s name was signed using an autopen on nearly every executive order and official document during his four-year tenure.”
Did he delegate the decision to approve and sign, or did he direct someone to use the autopen on his behalf? If so, why couldn’t he sign these documents himself?
President Trump signed 143 executive orders during the first 100 days of his second term, setting a record; most of these signings took place in front of the media and were video recorded.
Why couldn’t President Biden do the same? If he was unable to sign his name, was he also improperly and potentially illegally delegating that authority to others? Furthermore, was he capable of serving as president?
These are legitimate questions, as summarized by The Hill:
Did he personally grant broad (and possibly unconstitutional) pardons for family members, members of the January 6 Committee and Anthony Fauci, or did someone else make the decision? Was he responsible for all the executive orders issued under his name, or did White House personnel make those decisions?Biden’s cognitive decline and prostate cancer likely predate his presidency. Cancer treatment may cause “chemo brain,” which, combined with progressive dementia, may explain Biden’s difficulty in signing documents.
But it also questions his ability to understand what he was directing, if he even was, regarding subordinates signing. Who are these subordinates? Are they the vice president or other cabinet members under the presidential order of succession?
No, these are unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats: “three key White House aides – Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, and Ashley Williams – who ran interference for President Biden.” Did they also operate the autopen?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
My pressing question is what are the odds that when it is proved that Biden was out of the state where the autopen was deployed and there are no records of him authorizing the signing how many of his EO, bill signed, pardons and judicial appointments can be voided?
By 'state', you mean the state of being?
Pardons do not require a signature
Also - #Autopen
Aids behind Autopen use -
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/03/17/is-this-the-aide-that-was-behind-bidens-autopen-n2653954
“Are Biden auto signed documents invalid, as Trump alleges? My legal analysis.”
- Dershowitz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJltthYo-1o
************
Along with unelected and unaccountable family members who had to know Joe was not signing this stuff.
EVERYTHING signed by the AutoPen must be voided and EVERY appointment by that method must be retroactively CANCELED and every decision made by any judge appointed by that method must be REVERSED!!!
Article II does not reference a signature however if there is no evidence that the President knew about the pardon it is difficult to assert that the POTUS issued a pardon.
I thought the same - then I googled up a pic of the autopen - it could have easily been carried around with the President.
I personally think all the autopen stuff , including judicial appointments, ought to be invalidated.
But I don’t see how that could get done without CW2.
An interesting take on the requirement for physical presence in 2011/2012. This would undoubtably be part of the legal arguments on invalidating certain Biden actions.
Turnipseed, Terry L., “The President and the Autopen: It Is Unconstitutional for Someone or Something to Sign a Bill Outside of the President’s Presence” (2012). College of Law - Faculty Scholarship. 83.
https://surface.syr.edu/lawpub/83
In 2011, while attending the G8 summit in France, Barack Obama authorized an aide in Washington to use an autopen to sign an extension of the Patriot Act.
In 2013, Obama was in Hawaii when he used the autopen to sign the fiscal cliff bill into law.
In May 2024, George W. Bush was traveling in San Francisco when he directed an autopen to be used to sign legislation.
Apparently despite what is being said in the media, the physical presence of the POTUS is not the issue. Did the POTUS authorize the use of the autopen and was he even aware that the document was being signed. These seem like more fruitful lines of investigation.
OTOH much as I would love to see the illegal actions overturned (and I believe that they were illegal since Biden was demonstrably senile) it may be pragmatic to move on from the spilt milk and concentrate on rescinding what can be rescinded.
There is strong evidence that Hunter used the auto-pen to pardon himself.
When Pedo Joe found out.... what could he do?
So are pardons done by mental telepathy?
Lol.
We know Joe didn’t pardon Hunter because he said he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t lie, would he?
We shouldn't focus on the autopen nor on Biden's dementia. We should focus on winnable legal avenues like putting the Bidens and his family and everyone else connected in prison for bribery. We should put them in prison for lawfare against their political opponents.
Specifically, they advised:
"The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.
We emphasize that we are not suggesting that the President may delegate the decision to approve and sign a bill, only that, having made this decision, he may direct a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to the bill.
I'm not sure that I agree with this. I wonder if this opinion from the DoJ was self-serving?
The Constitution says in Article I Section 7:
Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.
The Constitution does not say "affixing his signature to a bill he approves" it says "If he approve he shall sign it." Furthermore, "the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill" goes against the letter of the Constitution and English history.
In England (and all of Europe, I would suppose), that's what signet rings were for.
The King would sign a document and then a drop of wax was put on the document and the King would press his ring into the wax to indicate that the signature was truly his. The ring was always in the possession of the King.
Using an autopen is akin to someone else taking the King's ring and affixing his seal to a document. The physical act of signing the bill into law was intended to ensure that the actual President was present and accountable to the people. It wasn't intended to make it convenient for the President when undertaking official acts like signing laws; it was expected that the President would take seriously the solemn event of signing a bill into law.
Using an autopen for official acts cheapens the importance of the act of a Presidential signing. The people must have confidence that it was the President who signed the bill into law. This also applies to grants of reprieves and pardons.
-PJ
The decision is very strange...
“directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen”
What documentation is required to prove the President directed that subordinate to “affix the President’s signature” on any particular document?
Without a clear process it is a recipe for fraud.
Recent controversies, such as concerns about the use of an autopen to sign presidential pardons during President Biden’s term, have sparked debate about the legality and constitutionality of such practices.
.
Ga’s Rep. Carter introduced the Signature Integrity for Granting National (SIGN) Pardons Act, which would require the President to physically sign all presidential pardons.
The Signature Integrity for Granting National (SIGN) Pardons Act, also known as the SIGN Pardons Act, is a bill that would require the President to personally sign any pardon or reprieve. The bill, introduced by Representative Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-GA), aims to ensure the authenticity and integrity of presidential pardons by requiring the President to physically sign them rather than relying on autopen technology.
Key aspects of the SIGN Pardons Act:
Personal Signature Required:
The bill specifies that the President must personally sign any pardon or reprieve granted under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution.
Motivation:
The bill was introduced in response to reports that President Biden used an autopen to sign pardons during his final days in office.
Rationale:
Rep. Carter argued that the autopen’s use raises questions about the President’s involvement in these legally binding decisions and that the SIGN Pardons Act would restore the integrity of the process.
Constitutional Duty:
Rep. Carter emphasized that the Presidential signature on pardons is a constitutional duty, and that outsourcing it to staff or machines is unacceptable.
The SIGN Pardons Act aims to ensure that presidential pardons are a personal act of the Commander-in-Chief, rather than a delegated task.
I restate that I think this was a self-serving justification. Note that there also exists a Great Seal of the United States which is kept in the possession of the Secretary of State. The Great Seal is required to be affixed to proclamations, treaties, and communications with foreign leaders to "authenticate" the signature of the President. Supposedly, this was an early form of "two-factor authentication" in that the President signs the document and the Secretary of State validates the signature with the Great Seal of the United States.
This two-factor authentication scheme seems to contradict the notion that the Framers approved of others signing documents in the President's name, unless they expected both the President, the Secretary of State, and whomever actually signed the document to be in on the scam, or that proving a Presidential signature was only worthy for foreigners but not for American citizens.
-PJ
I’ve mentioned this on several threads but my son managed the autopen for a secretary during Trump’s first term. What would happen is a congressperson or some sort of request would come in, staff lawyers would investigate, provide a letter from the secretary that was signed using autopen. It was a legal document. The thing to me that is concerning is with the process that I just described, the steps were all documented. My son would sometimes sign dozens of these a day because it would be impossible for a cabinet secretary to research every official request made and then reply.
If none of these steps were followed, it feels to me, a very illegal process but because the documents I mentioned signed by the secretaries autopen are all part of the federal record. Everything was documented, cataloged and filed. If they had to, they could go back and source who authored the letter and what their basis was for the reply.
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