President Donald Trump claimed that former President Joe Biden's pardons are "void" because "they were done by Autopen." The Constitution doesn't require a human signature on pardons, and legal memoranda back autopen use as valid.

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

48% : Trump issued pardons for Jan. 6, 2021, defendants.
40% : Yet, Trump also claimed that Biden "did not sign" the pardons and "did not know anything about them!" In this photo taken June 13, 2011, Bob Olding, president of Damilic Corp., the leading manufacture of automatic signing machines for replicating authentic signatures, demonstrates the features of the older model Autopen Model 80 in Rockville, Md. (AP) We found universal agreement among legal scholars that the Constitution doesn't require a pardon's direct human signing, and subsequent judicial decisions and legal memoranda support an autopen's use for similar purposes.
37% : Based on current legal precedent, we rate the statement False.
35% : A White House press office spokesperson referred PolitiFact to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's March 17 comments, that were in response to a reporter asking whether White House attorneys had told Trump he has the legal authority to reverse Biden's pardons because of the autopen.
35% : Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge?" When we asked the White House whether Trump ever used an autopen, a spokesperson pointed to Trump's comments to reporters the previous night on Air Force One.
27% : In an 1869 ruling, a federal court wrote: "The law undoubtedly is, that when a pardon is complete, there is no power to revoke it, any more than there is power to revoke any other completed act." Making the argument that pardons can be reversed is a risk for Trump himself.
26% : "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 March 17 on Truth Social.
14% : Trump said Biden's pardons of lawmakers on the committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack "are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT," because "they were done by Autopen.
11% : The burden of proof is on the speaker, and Trump provided no evidence of a legal path to declaring Biden's pardons void.

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