A tabletop model autopen produces a signature.
A tabletop model autopen produces a signature.
The Grinch wants to steal Christmas while US President Donald Trump wants to rob the autopen of its swish.
Trump's new target is a relatively mundane and uncontroversial device that Presidents, authors and musicians have been using for decades to affix their signature on documents sitting thousands of kilometres away.
Trump wrote on social media on Sunday night that he no longer considered valid the pardons his predecessor granted to people whom Trump sees as political enemies because they were signed using an autopen. Trump claimed, without offering evidence, that pardons signed by Joe Biden were “void, vacant and of no further force and effect”.
The autopen, which was patented in the US in 1803, is a mechanical tool used to replicate a person’s “authentic” signature. A pen or other writing implement is held by an arm to reproduce a signature after a writing sample has been fed to it.
Barack Obama made legislative history in 2011 when the then US President signed an extension of the Patriot Act. He was in France on official business and authorised the use of the autopen to sign it into law.
Previously, White House aides travelled overseas to hand-deliver recently passed legislation to the President, like in the case of Harry Truman signing a Greek-Turkish aid bill in Hotel Muehlebach in Kansas City in 1947.
John F. Kennedy used it and so did Lyndon B. Johnson. The National Enquirer in 1968 published an article suggesting that Johnson was not in control, with the headline: “One of the best kept secrets in Washington: The Robot that Sits in for the President.”
Obama’s use of the autopen didn’t go unnoticed.
Tom Graves, who previously served as the US representative for Georgia, wrote a letter to the then President questioning the legal basis for using an autopen. White House officials said the decision was based on a 2005 memorandum by the justice department, which concluded that “the President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill to sign it”.
Despite the 2005 memorandum, then President George W. Bush never used an autopen to sign a bill. But his defence secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had to wade through negative publicity for using a mechanised signature on condolence letters.
The autopen has seen a fair share of controversy. Take the case of Bob Dylan, the elusive Nobel laureate. The 83-year-old has rarely apologised in his life, but 2022 was an exception. He published a book titled The Philosophy of Modern Song, featuring his commentary on tracks by other artistes, with a limited run of 900 “hand-signed” editions sold for $599 each. All copies came with a letter of authenticity from the publisher Simon & Schuster.
However, the autopen got Dylan tangled in an autograph controversy and he issued a public apology citing Covid constraints and a bad bout of vertigo as reasons for using an autopen. Handwritten penmanship has a flow but with a pen machine, the beginning and end points of each stroke apply more pressure to the page.
Other musicians have been using the autopen to send fans autographed letters.
Has Trump ever used the autopen? He has, but “only for very unimportant papers”. He told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night that “we may use it, as an example, to send some young person a letter because it’s nice.… But to sign pardons and all of the things that he (Biden) signed with an autopen is disgraceful”.