Fox News’ Peter Doocy on Tuesday brought copies of President Joe Biden’s last pardons — pardons of his family, Anthony Fauci, and January 6th Committee members — to the White House press briefing and suggested that some are not “authentic.”
“Is this White House of the opinion that the only pardon that would count is one that the president signed himself?” Doocy asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who, like President Donald Trump, has pushed unsubstantiated theories that some of Biden’s executive actions are invalid because of alleged autopen use.
An autopen is a machine used to mechanically and automatically sign documents, a longstanding practice in the White House. Trump, however, has argued that Biden used an autopen for his preemptive pardons of potential Trump political targets like Fauci and Biden family members, and that they are therefore void. It is not confirmed whether Biden used an autopen to sign the pardons, and legal experts say there is no legal mechanism to rescind them anyway.
Regardless, Doocy all but said at the briefing that Biden did not physically sign the last pardons:
“When you look at these last-minute Biden pardons,” Doocy said as he held up copies of the pardons, “most of the big ones have the same very neat signature. We would expect that probably to be the autopen.”
“There is one,” he added, holding up another paper copy of a Biden pardon, “that looks different. It looks authentic. In fact, if you look at the last name, it almost looks like the president was having a hard time spelling his last name there.”
“Very interesting props, if you want to bring them to my office later so I can take a closer look,” Leavitt said to Doocy.
Leavitt then repeated Trump’s unsubstantiated suggestions that the autopen theory suggests that Biden was not actually “running the country for the past four years,” per the press secretary.
“Perhaps those documents were signed with the autopen,” she continued. “Something that I believe the Department of Justice is looking into.”
