Trump vs. the Autopen: Can He Really Un-Pardon People and Kill Biden’s Paper Trail?

President Trump just fired a missile at Joe Biden’s paperwork.

On Nov. 28, 2025, he declared on Truth Social that any document signed by Biden using an autopen—a mechanical signature device—

“is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect.”

He went further:

“I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally. Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury.”

CBS notes Biden signed 162 executive orders as president. Some were hand-signed, some likely autopen. Trump has already revoked dozens of those orders the normal way—but now he’s attacking the legitimacy of the signature itself.

Layer on top of that what Axios reportedly found in internal emails: Biden’s own people were worried about how clemency and autopen use were handled in his final months.

That’s where this gets serious—for Hunter Biden, any other “Bidens” who got clemency, and federal death row inmates whose sentences were commuted.

Let’s break it down in plain English for Joe Everyman.

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What Axios Says Biden’s Own Team Was Worried About

Here’s the picture you painted from Axios’ reporting:

High-ranking Biden administration officials repeatedly questioned and criticized how the president’s team decided on controversial pardons and allowed the frequent use of an autopen to sign measures late in his term, internal emails obtained by Axios show. Several senior Justice Department officials raised objections about the clemency process with the White House Counsel’s office, which was led by Ed Siskel. He helped steer the clemency process in the administration’s final months and did not respond to a request for comment.

Other DOJ officials also objected to processes the Biden White House used during his final months in office. Liz Oyer, a Justice Department pardon attorney, expressed anger about the White House’s interference with death row inmates. She wrote that Biden’s White House lawyers asked DOJ not to request the views of the murder victims’ families if the department hadn’t already done so. That included 10 death row inmates who hadn’t filed for clemency before Biden considered it.

After the extent of Biden’s clemency actions became clear, Oyer wrote an apologetic email to U.S. attorney offices, according to multiple people who have seen the email. Some senior Biden White House officials pushed back on the frequent requests to use the autopen.

Biden White House staff secretary Stef Feldman, who was in charge of the West Wing paper flow, repeatedly asked for more details and confirmation of the president’s intentions with the autopen — including when it came to clemency, according to several emails Axios obtained.

“When did we get [Biden’s] approval of this?” she asked on Jan. 7, after being asked to use the autopen for an executive order.

On Jan. 16, when told to use the autopen to commute several cases related to crack-cocaine sentences, Feldman wrote back: “I’m going to need email from [Rosa Po] on original chain confirming [Biden] signs off on the specific documents when they are ready.”

That’s a lot of bureaucratic throat-clearing for something that should be simple:

• Did the President actually approve this pardon/commutation/order,
• Or are staff pushing paperwork through an autopen pipeline and hoping it sticks?

You asked the obvious question:

Why would Biden’s own staff be concerned about the autopen stuff if they didn’t smell a rat? Was it CYA or actual concern it would come back and bite Biden?

Short answer: both.

• CYA (Cover Your Ass): Staff knew these decisions—especially death row commutations and controversial pardons—would absolutely be scrutinized later. They wanted an email trail showing, “The boss really did sign off.”
• Substantive concern: Some DOJ officials clearly thought the process itself was wrong:
  • Not consulting victims’ families,
  • Pushing through clemency for people who hadn’t filed petitions,
  • Heavy reliance on autopen near the end of the term.

Even inside Team Biden, people saw the landmines and didn’t want to be the ones standing on them.

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What Is an Autopen, and Why Does It Matter?

An autopen is basically a mechanical arm holding a pen that reproduces a person’s signature. Presidents have used them for years to sign:

• Routine letters
• Some bills
• Probably some executive orders, proclamations, and yes—potentially clemency documents

Back in 2011, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said: if a statute requires the president’s “signature,” an autopen is fine as long as the president personally authorizes its use for that act.

In other words:

The key question is not “Did he physically move the pen?” but “Did he actually decide to do this and direct that his signature be affixed?”

That’s why people like Stef Feldman were asking:

“When did we get [Biden’s] approval of this?”
“I’m going to need email… confirming [Biden] signs off…”

Because if they don’t have proof of that, they risk:

• Court challenges
• Political blowback
• Investigations under a future administration

They smelled a rat. The rat might have been:

• Biden’s cognitive decline,
• Sloppy process in the rush of the final months,
• Or power-hungry staff freelancing decisions in his name.

Either way, they knew they needed receipts.

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Executive Orders vs. Pardons: Two Very Different Battles

Now, Trump is saying: everything signed by autopen is terminated.

That sounds like it hits executive orders and clemency equally. Legally, it doesn’t.

1. Executive orders and similar policy documents

Here Trump is on solid ground, autopen or not.

• Any president can revoke his predecessor’s executive orders at will.
• Biden did it to Trump. Trump is now doing it to Biden.
• If Trump issues a proper order saying “EO 140xx is revoked,” that’s perfectly normal.

The autopen angle is almost irrelevant here. He doesn’t need it. He can kill Biden’s EOs just because he disagrees with them.

Where the real mess starts is with clemency.

2. Pardons and commutations (Hunter, “the Bidens,” death-row inmates)

The Constitution gives the president the power to:

“grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States.”

Once a pardon or commutation is validly granted and accepted, courts have treated it as final and not revocable by a later president.

So Trump has to do one of two things:

1. Argue that the autopen clemency actions were never valid in the first place because Biden didn’t actually approve them, or
2. Claim he has the power to cancel even valid pardons and commutations.

#2 is almost certainly a loser in court. The Supreme Court has long treated clemency as a one-way, final act once validly granted.

So the only serious legal play is #1:

“These autopen pardons/commutations were unauthorized. Biden didn’t really approve them. They’re void.”

That’s exactly why those internal emails matter.

• If Feldman and others were constantly demanding proof of Biden’s sign-off,
• And sometimes didn’t get clear proof,
• A future DOJ can say: “Look, their own staff didn’t trust the process. These weren’t genuine presidential acts.”

Now we’re in the zone of case-by-case litigation.

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What Happens to Hunter and the Death Row Commutations?

Let’s walk through the two big categories you care about.

A. If Hunter Biden (and others) really were pardoned by Biden

Hypothetically, if Biden did pardon Hunter and possibly other Bidens for specific federal offenses:

• If those pardons were actually approved by Biden (even if the piece of paper was signed by autopen), they’re likely valid.
• A later president cannot just “cancel” them as a matter of policy.
• If Trump’s DOJ tried to prosecute Hunter for conduct clearly covered by a valid pardon, Hunter’s lawyers would walk into court with the document and say: “Case dismissed. This offense has been pardoned.”

The judge would then have to decide:

• Is this a real presidential act of clemency or a sham created by staff without Biden’s authorization?

If the evidence shows Biden did approve it? Trump loses that fight.

If the evidence shows staff manufactured it without real presidential authorization? Then a court could say:

“This was never a valid pardon in the first place.”

In that scenario, yes—Hunter and others could be prosecuted like the pardon never happened.

B. Death row inmates whose sentences were commuted to life

This is even more sensitive.

If Biden commuted the sentences of federal death row inmates to life without parole:

• And those commutations were valid presidential acts,
• Then a later president cannot simply say “Never mind—back to death.”

Even if Trump convinced a court that some commutations were never valid because Biden didn’t really approve them, dragging people from life back to death row years later would trigger:

• Due Process concerns (fairness, reliance)
• Eighth Amendment concerns (arbitrary or cruel punishment)

Lawyers would slam the brakes with emergency motions. Courts would not let people be quietly shuffled to the execution chamber just because a new president doesn’t like how an autopen was used.

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So Why Was Biden’s Own Staff So Nervous About the Autopen?

Back to your core question:

Was it CYA or actual concern it would come back and bite Biden?

It was both, and here’s how I’d break it down:

1. They knew the optics were terrible.
   • Signing controversial pardons and death row commutations with a machine, late in the term, while Biden’s mental fitness was under a cloud, was always going to look bad.
   • Even loyal staff could see the headlines coming.
2. They worried about legal vulnerability.
   • If you can’t prove the president actually made the decision, a court might one day treat the document as invalid.
   • Hence Feldman’s emails demanding explicit confirmation of Biden’s approval before using the autopen.
3. They sensed a moral problem.
   • Liz Oyer’s reported anger about skipping victims’ families and granting clemency to people who hadn’t even filed petitions suggests real ethical discomfort, not just politics.
   • When the DOJ pardon attorney is apologizing to U.S. Attorneys afterward, that’s more than routine paper-pushing.
4. They were absolutely in CYA mode.
   • When political operators see a risk they can’t fully control, they do what they can: build an email trail that says, “I asked whether the president really approved this. If it blows up later, don’t hang it on me.”

They might not have “smelled a rat” in the sense of a Hollywood conspiracy, but they smelled risk:

• Risk to Biden’s legacy
• Risk to their own reputations
• Risk that a future administration (like Trump’s) would comb through every decision and scream “fraud” and “cover-up”

Which is exactly what’s happening now.

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Bottom Line for Joe Everyman

Here’s where we land:

• Executive orders: Trump can revoke Biden’s EOs all day long. That’s standard. The autopen angle is noise; he doesn’t need it to undo Biden’s policy.
• Pardons and commutations:
  • If Biden actually approved them, they’re likely final and not revocable—even by Trump.
  • If some were pushed through using autopen without real presidential authorization, they can be attacked as invalid from the start. That’s where internal emails and process concerns become ammunition.
• Biden’s staff concern:
  • They weren’t stupid. They knew the combination of:
    • controversial pardons,
    • death row commutations,
    • victims’ families being bypassed,
    • and heavy autopen use
      was a time bomb.
  • Their paper trail—email requests for confirmation, internal objections, apologies—looks like a mix of CYA and genuine discomfort about what they were being asked to rubber-stamp.

In other words:

They smelled something that could absolutely come back and bite Biden—and them—if the political winds shifted.

Well, the winds shifted.

Now the courts, not Truth Social, will have the last word on what counts as a real presidential act—and which “autopen specials” were just staffers reaching beyond their authority.