Obama Was First to Sign a Bill With Autopen, but Presidents Have Used Them for Decades

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Machines to copy signatures have been used by presidents since Jefferson. In 2005, the government held that presidents may use them to sign official documents.

WASHINGTON—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.”

The Epoch Times is unable to independently verify whether the pardons were signed by autopen or not.

The Biden Presidential Library at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) denied The Epoch Times’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Biden administration records about autopen use, citing a statute that prevents their release for five years after a president leaves office.

The former president, who has not yet established a post-presidential office, is not reachable.

Courts have opined that presidential pardons need not be written, and may be granted orally.

On whether writing is required as part of the president’s exercise of the clemency power, “The answer is undoubtedly no,” ruled the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in 2024. “The plain language of the Constitution imposes no such limit.”

The Law of Autopens

Aside from the question of Biden’s foreknowledge, the constitutionality of autopen use by a president for official acts has never been determined by a federal court.

Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution requires that any bill passed by Congress must be signed by the president in order to become law, using the language “If he approve he shall sign it.”

The Constitution specifies no method for affixing the president’s signature. On the issuance of pardons, the Constitution is less specific—in Article II, Section 2, it states that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment,” with no mention of signature.

For nearly 20 years, the Executive Branch has held that autopen use is constitutional.

In 2005, during President George W. Bush’s administration, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that the president may sign a bill, within the constitutional definition, by use of an autopen or even directing that his signature be copied by another person.

“The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves … 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,” wrote the office in the caption of its opinion.

The Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion is supported by contemporary legal scholars.

“Presidents are allowed to use the autopen and courts will not presume a dead-hand conspiracy,” wrote Jonathan Turley, a conservative legal scholar and professor at the George Washington University Law School, on social media.

“Many of these were high-profile pardons, including for his own son, that Biden acknowledged publicly … For all of these reasons, this dog will not hunt.”

The Use of Autopens

Machines to copy signatures, such as autopens, have long been used by U.S. presidents. President Thomas Jefferson, during his term from 1801 to 1809, extensively used a “polygraph” machine to copy and sign letters, though it required action by his own hand to work. Modern use of the autopen in government began in 1942, when a machine developed by Robert M. De Shazo, Jr. was acquired by the Secretary of the Navy to duplicate his signature, according to the National Parks Service.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson permitted an autopen device he used to be photographed by the National Enquirer, which then ran a story “The Robot That Sits in for the President.” Johnson’s decision confirmed the existence and use of the device, which had primarily been used by presidents and other senior officials to sign correspondence and some documents.

Autopen use, even in these circumstances, has been controversial. In 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld faced public criticism for using an autopen to sign condolence letters to families of soldiers killed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In response, Rumsfeld vowed that “in the future I [will] sign each letter.”

The first use of an autopen to sign a bill into law was on May 26, 2011, by President Barack Obama, who ordered its use to sign an extension of the PATRIOT Act’s surveillance provisions into law. Obama was on a trip to France for a G8 Summit at the time and could not have returned to sign the law before the surveillance provisions expired that day, which would have affected national security. At the time, the White House cited the opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration as a persuasive authority on the matter.

Obama used an autopen a second time in 2011, while at an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Indonesia, to approve appropriations bills that would fund government agencies. He last used it, for a third time, in 2013, to sign the American Taxpayer Relief Act while on vacation in Hawaii.

Biden, during his presidential term, used an autopen at least once. He signed the Airport and Airway Extension Act into law while visiting San Francisco. The bill averted an expiration of authority for the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees air traffic control and airline safety, by granting a one-week extension.

Trump, for his part, is not known to have signed any legislation or executive actions by autopen.

“It has been our policy for every legally operational/binding document that President Trump signs to contain his hand signature,” wrote a White House official in a statement to The Epoch Times.

In response to a question on March 17 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, Trump said he has used autopens “only for very unimportant papers.”

“I‘ll sign them whenever I can, but when I can’t, we’ll use an autopen,” he said.