Tyrant Idiot Thinks He Can Undo Biden Pardons Through Imaginary 'Sleepy Joe Autopen' Loophole

Sigh.

No autopen! You’re the autopen!

We can all be confident that President Dumbfuck has been seething for two months over the last-minute and pre-emptive pardons that his predecessor, Joe Biden, signed for various Trumpian bête noires on his way out the door in January. The man never forgets anything that even reeks of a slight, plus he’s loonier than a chihuahua on meth.

So it is no surprise that late on Sunday night, the giant baby announced he had come up with a work-around to the problem of his not being able to wreak vengeance on, among others, Anthony Fauci and the January 6 Select Committee: those pardons were (ALLEGEDLY) signed by an autopen, so ipso facto ergo et al., they are null and void. Checkmate, Deep State!

Well in that case, let’s have a list of everything in both Trump administrations that has been signed by autopen, so we can declare them VACANT, VOID, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT. For that matter, let’s look at everything signed by every president going back to Harry Truman, who was the first to use an autopen, an example followed by each and every one of his successors.

Are there any bills or executive orders or — oh God, the potential irony — pardons that one of Trump's aides signed with an autopen because President Tinyfingers was too busy shanking chip shots into sand traps to be bothered?

Seriously, man, you should tell people you were aiming for that bunker just to make the hole a little challenging.

Now that we think about it, how many January 6 rioters did Trump pardon his first day in office eight-weeks-that-feel-like-eighty-years ago? Fifteen hundred or so? Did he sign all 1,500 pardon documents manually? Because if he didn’t, VOID, VACANT, OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.

You may be wondering if the question of whether presidential signatures done with autopens are legally valid has ever come up before. As it happens, the Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush wrote a 30-page opinion on the subject back in 2005. The conclusion? It’s legal, shut up:

The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.

Those are the first sentences of the opinion. You don’t need to read past that! Or at least the aide who has to present the conclusion to Trump with small words and finger puppets doesn’t have to read past that, since we don’t think reading isn’t in his skillset.

If President Mushroomdick would like to order his own OLC to withdraw that opinion and — ahem — pen a new one that aligns with his own personal view that he should be able to send Adam Schiff to Guantanamo for the crime of performing constitutionally mandated congressional oversight, he’s welcome to try! The OLC is currently headed by a Federalist Society wingnut, so we assume granting Trump whatever power he wants is a mere formality.

You may also be wondering, can a president even revoke a pardon signed by one of his predecessors? Isn’t the pardon power one of the very few powers granted a president that he can wield with no oversight or accountability, as if he really was the king that Trump’s toadies tell him he is?

Well, the answer to that is no, a president cannot revoke a pardon granted by his predecessor once the pardon document has been delivered to the person being pardoned. We suppose it is possible the Biden administration forgot to take that very important step, but we seriously doubt it.

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Joe Biden Pardons, Commutes Sentences Of People Who Never Tried To Overturn 2020 Election

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Nonetheless, if there is any Trump quisling willing to open an investigation, it would be Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Nazi Barbie doll who might soon make us long for the relatively legally ethical reign of Jeff Sessions. So don’t be surprised if the Justice Department claims by the end of Monday that it is looking into whether the pardons were fraudulent because Sleepy Joe Biden was too senile to sign them himself.

Imagine the number of hours and the amount of labor that various lawyers and judges are now going to have to devote to convincing the Supreme Court that a document signed by the president is valid even if he used an autopen. It’s almost too staggering to contemplate without a gummy the size of Delaware.

Also, this passage in Trump’s statement caught our eye:

Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level.

Trump has been claiming for a long time that the Select Committee destroyed all its records. Needless to say, he is lying. But when has that ever stopped him:

The committee did have some videos of witness interviews that were not released due to what it deemed “sensitive” details. Those interviews were archived at ... drum roll ... the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. So if Trump wanted to get his hands on them, we’re guessing he could.

The committee didn’t have any documents that proved Trump’s innocence, because such documents do not exist, because he is guilty as fuck. We wonder who he’ll fire when the nonexistent evidence never turns up, due to it being nonexistent.

Another reason this issue may be popping up now is this story from The New York Post a week ago. It seems the Heritage Foundation claims many of Biden’s executive orders were signed with an autopen, thereby making them invalid for some reason. The only problem, as Newsweek explains, is that Heritage is looking at online and digitized versions of the documents, not the originals. Newsweek says that might explain the discrepancy:

These copies use a computer-generated signature for where the President signed the document, meaning that online copies of Biden's signature appear to be auto-signed, but they're not the original version. There is photographic proof of Biden signing many of the documents that The Heritage Foundation is claiming were signed by autopen.

You know what else might explain it? That the Heritage Foundation is full of shit. That is the simplest, and therefore correct, explanation.

[TruthSocial / NY Post / Newsweek]

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