Former President Donald Trump has asserted that the use of an autopen by former President Joe Biden’s governance to sign official documents constitutes a significant political scandal. Trump alleges that this practice was employed to conceal Biden’s purported cognitive decline and to assert executive authority improperly.

Trump stated, “In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority. This conspiracy marks one of the most hazardous and concerning scandals in American history. The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”

Biden responded to the memo Wednesday evening, brushing it off as “ridiculous” and a “distraction” put forth by the GOP.

“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,” Biden said. “This is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families,all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.”

Trump continued in his Thursday comments that the Biden administration’s use of an autopen is one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history,remarking that autopens are typically used to send mass amounts of letters – not for official presidential actions.

Trump Highlights Disrespectful Nature of Autopen Signatures

Trump emphasized the importance of personal signatures on official documents, particularly those related to significant appointments. He argued that using an autopen for such purposes is disrespectful.

“I sign critically important documents. Usually, when they put documents in front of you, they’re critically important.Even if you’re signing ambassadorships or – and I consider that critically important, I think it’s inappropriate,” Trump continued. “You have somebody that’s devoting four years of their life or more to being an ambassador. I think you really deserve that person deserves to get a real signature, not a not an autopen signature.”

“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency… Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”

The president added that he can easily identify autopen signatures from genuine pen-to-paper signatures due to “two little pinholes from pulling the paper” that are found on documents.

“I think it’s very disrespectful to people when they get an autopen signature,” Trump said. “Autopen to me are used when thousands of letters come in from young people all over the country,and you want to get them back and,you know,people use auto pens for that to send,a little signature at the bottom of a letter. We have thousands of them. We get thousands of letters a week, and it’s not possible to, you know, though I’d like to do it myself, but you can’t do it. That’s where autopens start and stop.”

background on Autopen Usage

Autopen signatures are automatically produced by a machine, as opposed to an authentic, handwritten signature.

The conservative heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project first investigated the Biden administration’s use of an autopen earlier in 2025 and found that the same signature was on a bevvy of executive orders and other official documents, while Biden’s signature on the document announcing his departure from the 2024 race varied from the apparent machine-produced signature.

The reports led to speculation that Biden aides had approved of executive orders and sweeping pardons, not the president.