President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he is revoking all executive orders that were signed with an autopen under President Joe Biden.
“The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“I am hereby canceling 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.”
According to Trump, 92 percent of documents signed by Biden were done so with the autopen.
The use of an autopen to sign legislation and executive orders is legal, provided the president has authorized its use.
Trump, however, claimed that Biden was not aware of the signatures.
“Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury,” Trump said.
His announcement followed an intensified crackdown on illegal immigration after two National Guard members were shot—one fatally—on Thanksgiving Eve near the White House, in downtown Washington.
The suspect in the shooting has been identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who had previously worked with U.S. government entities in Afghanistan, including the CIA. He entered the country in September 2021 under a Biden-era resettlement program launched after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Trump accused the Biden administration of not properly vetting these Afghan nationals before allowing them into the country.
“You can’t get them out once they come in. And they came in and they were unvetted, they were unchecked. There were many of them, and they came in on big planes, and it was disgraceful,” Trump told reporters on Nov. 27.
It is unclear whether Trump’s autopen message is part of his recent actions in response to the shooting.
According to legal scholars, U.S. presidents may revoke previously issued executive orders.
“The president, any president, has the power to revoke any and all prior executive orders that he sees fit,” legal scholar and commentator John Shu told The Epoch Times.
“President Trump has already started the process,” noted Shu, who served under Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. “On his first day in office, he began reversing some of his predecessor’s executive orders. Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama did the same.”
However, he doesn’t believe a president has the power to reverse a predecessor’s pardon.
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