President Joe Biden gives a pen to Bette Marafino, president of the Connecticut chapter of the Alliance for Retired Americans, after he signed the Social Security Fairness Act during an event in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 5, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump claimed in a social media post late Sunday night that former President Joe Biden’s eleventh hour pardons for numerous officials are no longer valid — a power not granted to Trump in the Constitution.

Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social that Biden’s sweeping preemptive pardons are “are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.”

Without citing any evidence, Trump also alleged Biden “did not know anything about” the pardons.

Just hours before leaving office, Biden pardoned lawmakers who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as former high-ranking health official Dr. Anthony Fauci, who steered the United States through the COVID-19 pandemic, and retired Gen. Mark Milley, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Biden also pardoned several members of his own family just before his term expired. The White House released Biden’s statements regarding his Jan. 20 pardons.

Autopen used before

The Autopen is a device that replicates signatures and was used by former President Barack Obama in 2011 to sign an extension of the Patriot Act.

Experts say the debate over the use of the Autopen was settled in a 2005 opinion from the White House Office of Legal Counsel that stated a president may direct a subordinate to affix his or her signature to a bill using the mechanism.

David Super, who focuses on constitutional and administrative law at Georgetown University, said Trump’s Autopen argument is “absurd.”

“But even if it wasn’t, the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says the president has the power to pardon,” Super said.

“So if President Biden wanted to simply verbally tell someone they’re pardoned, he could do that. It wouldn’t have to be in writing at all. Administratively, of course, we want things in writing. It makes things a lot simpler, but there’s no constitutional requirement,” he said.

The right-wing Heritage Foundation posted a graphic on the social media platform X on March 10 and 11, claiming the foundation’s “Project Oversight” uncovered the exact same signature on a number of Biden’s pardons.

Fox News also claimed on March 9 that Biden’s exact same signature was found by Heritage on numerous documents from 2022 and 2024 that were published in the Federal Register.

The National Archives said in a statement that all signatures on official documents published in the Federal Register come from “one graphic file,” according to Snopes.

Press secretary defends ‘raising the point’

Kermit Roosevelt, constitutional law expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Autopen argument is a “red herring.” Trump’s other suggestion, that  Biden didn’t know about the pardons, would essentially make them invalid.

“If the president doesn’t know that something was done, then it’s not a valid official act,” Roosevelt said. “But I highly doubt that that happened. I know of no reason to think that that did happen.”

“I mean, it is sort of characteristic of Trump to make insinuations and raise questions without any evidence, and then the White House says he’s just asking questions,” Roosevelt said. “I don’t think that’s a great way to govern.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Trump was “raising the point that did the president even know about these pardons? Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge?”

“I think it’s a question that everybody in this room should be looking into,” Leavitt said, citing the New York Post as a source.

The White House did not immediately respond to a question about the Trump administration’s use of the Autopen.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump speaks at the Justice Department March 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — In a rare appearance by a president at the U.S. Justice Department, Donald Trump delivered a meandering speech Friday promising a “proud new chapter in the chronicles of American justice” and drumming on his campaign trail refrains of the department’s “weaponization” against him and his supporters.

Less than a year ago, the president was a defendant in two Justice Department cases and made history after becoming a convicted felon in New York state. Trump told the crowd of department officials, law enforcement officers and lawmakers his administration is “restoring fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”

“It’s going to be legendary,” Trump said.

The president also insinuated he may keep the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C., after a drawn-out battle over whether it would move to Maryland or Virginia.

Calling out law enforcement officers in the room, Trump said “with me in the White House, you once again have a president who will always have your back.”

Republican senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana were among the crowd, even though the Senate had not yet voted to extend government funding that was set to expire in less than eight hours.

Trump’s hour-long speech in part addressed crossings at the southwest border and deaths from illicit fentanyl. At one point he invited to the stage a mother who lost her son in 2022 to a pill laced with a deadly amount of fentanyl.

But the president’s remarks often meandered into topics unrelated to the Justice Department’s mission, including several minutes about his reelection endorsement from Indiana basketball legend Bobby Knight.

Classified documents case

At numerous points during the speech, Trump lambasted the DOJ’s investigations into his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Florida estate and his attempted conspiracy to overturn former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

He said department officials “broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago, and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.”

The government, following the election, dropped its appeal of Trump’s classified documents case, citing a longstanding DOJ policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents.

Florida federal District Judge Aileen Cannon had tossed the case on the grounds that the Justice Department had unlawfully appointed and compensated special counsel Jack Smith.

“The case against me was bullshit, and she correctly dismissed it,” Trump said.

Smith also dropped the 2020 election subversion case against Trump, which probed his alleged role in inciting the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump granted clemency to the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants just hours into his second presidency, undoing the largest-ever investigation executed by the Justice Department.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has since overseen the firings and demotions of FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors who undertook Jan. 6 investigations and the two cases against Trump.

During his Friday remarks Trump thanked his former personal lawyers. Todd Blanche, who defended Trump in the Justice Department cases, is now No. 2 at the agency.

‘We have to keep on showing up’

At a press conference afterward outside the department, Democratic Maryland U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, alongside a police officer who was at the Capitol on Jan 6 and former DOJ officials, struggled to talk over a heckling protester. The event was livestreamed on C-SPAN.

Raskin, who sat on the House select committee to investigate the Capitol attack, described Trump’s speech as a “tirade” and praised Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn for “defending democracy.”

“He pardoned everybody and let them know that it’s OK. Now listen, I don’t know what accountability looks like, I don’t know what this fight is going to continue to look like, but we have to keep on showing up,” Dunn said.

One of Biden’s last acts was issuing broad preemptive pardons to members of the Jan. 6 committee as well as Dunn and three other officers who testified before the panel.

Over 140 police officers were injured in the riot.

Brendan Ballou, a former DOJ prosecutor who investigated the Jan. 6 attack, said while the administration is “perfectly happy to talk about the pardons, it is less willing to talk about some of the things that are happening in this building right now.”

He alleged DOJ officials are dismantling or weakening other divisions, including antitrust and anticorruption.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond for comment.

The last time a president made a public appearance at the department was former President Barack Obama in 2014.