“Joe Biden didn't sign [the pardons]; he didn't know anything about them.”

Biden has flatly and publicly denied this, on the record, in writing: "Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false." There is no documented evidence, none, that the autopen was ever used without Biden's authorization.

Even if every pardon were autopen-signed, it would change nothing legally. The Constitution does not require pardons to be hand-signed, or even written down. The Justice Department's own Office of Legal Counsel concluded in 2005 that a president "need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature," and a 1929 Solicitor General memo reached the same conclusion. Presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Obama used mechanical signing devices, as did Trump himself in his first term.

And Trump cannot 'void' the pardons anyway. Legal experts across the spectrum dismissed his declaration as having no constitutional basis: there is no mechanism for any president to revoke a predecessor's delivered pardon. As UNC law professor Michael Gerhardt put it, "once there is a pardon, no one — not any president or Congress or the courts — can undo it." "Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false." — Former President Joe Biden, written statement, June 2025