Biden administration proclamations, executive orders, pardons and commutations were mechanically signed using at least three different versions of President Biden’s signature during his four years in office, according to a new analysis.
Thousands of documents were signed by the autopen while Mr. Biden was president, the D.C.-based Oversight Project determined after analyzing as many signatures. The device was often used even at times when Mr. Biden was in the White House and could have signed for himself.
Use of the pen “exploded” during the second half of 2022, when Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline became increasingly apparent, investigators for the Oversight Project found.
This week, lawyers at the government watchdog group said they discovered a third unique mechanical signature, adding to two other autopen signatures they say were in frequent use during Mr. Biden’s presidency. The latest mechanical signature discovered was used to sign hundreds of presidential proclamations beginning days after Mr. Biden took office in January 2021.
“The uniformity of these signatures on these proclamations led us to conclude with high confidence that there is a third autopen signature,” Kyle Brosnan, Oversight’s vice president of legal matters, told The Washington Times.
The Oversight Project is an independent, nonprofit organization previously affiliated with the conservative Heritage Foundation.
It’s not clear why at least three different mechanical signatures would have been used in the Biden White House, or if the presidential autopen typically uses multiple signatures.
The National Archives, which is in custody of Mr. Biden’s signed documents, did not immediately have a response.
President Trump’s autopen uses a single version of his signature, a source familiar told The Washington Times, and its use is limited to signing correspondence with the public.
The Biden administration’s auto-penned documents are now the focus of a Justice Department investigation, ordered by President Trump, into whether Mr. Biden’s close aides were mechanically signing executive orders, pardons and other important documents without Mr. Biden’s full knowledge and understanding.
Mr. Trump suggested some of the documents, including pardons may not be valid.
“The Department of Justice, under Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, is acting independently to determine whether President Biden was making decisions related to pardons or commutations or if unelected staffers took advantage of him through the use of an autopen,” a senior administration official said.
Mr. Biden hit back at the claims, issuing a statement on Thursday forcefully denying he was unaware of executive orders, pardons and other actions happening in his own White House.
“I made the decisions during my presidency,” Mr. Biden said.
Close aides anonymously disclosed in tell-all books and news articles that Mr. Biden, who left office at age 82, was largely checked out in the latter part of his presidency.
During that time, the Oversight Project investigators found, Mr. Biden’s autopen was working in overdrive.
Investigators said Mr. Biden appears to have physically signed every executive order and pardon during the first 17 months of his presidency.
According to their analysis, the autopen first entered the scene for executive orders and pardons on June 13, 2022, when it was used sign the document commuting the sentence of Brittany Krambeck, who was serving the end of an 18-year drug conviction on home confinement.
About a month later, the autopen was used for the first time to sign one of Mr. Biden’s executive orders.
Around this time, Oversight Project investigators determined, the Biden White House’s use of the autopen for pardons and executive orders suddenly increased dramatically and appeared, they said, to coincide with Mr. Biden’s apparent cognitive and physical decline.
Beginning July 15, 2022, the Biden autopen was used to sign every executive order for the rest of the year, Oversight investigators determined by analyzing the signatures on the documents.
Aides seemed to be ramping up use of the device as Mr. Biden’s age-related difficulties were becoming more pronounced.
Mr. Biden suffered a fall from his bicycle while cycling near his beach house in Delaware on June 18, 2022. A few weeks later, he stumbled through a White House speech on abortion, mistakenly reading the teleprompter instructions, “end of quote — repeat the line,” and fumbling a key sentence on women and political power.
In September 2022, he called out the name of a House lawmaker to stand up and be recognized while speaking at a White House conference on health and nutrition. The lawmaker, Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana, had died weeks earlier in a car crash.
In October, Mr. Biden wished Vice President Kamala Harris a happy birthday, calling her “a great president.” That same month, he blamed high prices on “a war in Iraq,” and said his son, Beau, who succumbed to brain cancer, had died there.
As Mr. Biden’s gaffes and stumbles continued, the autopen use became routine.
In 2023, Oversight project investigators determined, 16 of the 24 executive orders issued by the Biden White House were signed by autopen and, in 2023, three-quarters of his executive orders — 14 out of 19 — were mechanically signed.
Mr. Biden was president for 20 days in 2025. He issued 14 executive orders and all were signed by the autopen.
Investigators noted what they called a disturbing pattern with the autopen. In the vast majority of auto-signed executive orders, Mr. Biden was in Washington and could have signed them personally, but didn’t.
The autopen’s use was originally intended to sign documents when the president was traveling and unable to provide a physical signature.
It’s not clear why Mr. Biden may have relied on it so heavily.
The new book “Original Sin,” authored by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, quoted anonymous aides who said Mr. Biden was able to only provide “four to six good hours a day,” and that they tried not to overwork him.
On Dec. 1, 2024, Mr. Biden pardoned his own son with a real signature. Hunter Biden was convicted of three felonies connected to his illegal purchase of a firearm and was facing a likely federal tax fraud conviction.
But most of Mr. Biden’s final pardons and commutations were signed by autopen, including those aimed at shielding his family members, former COVID-19 adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and members of the Democrat-run House panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
The autopen signed commutations for nearly every federal inmate on death row, among them individuals convicted of murdering children and law enforcement officers.
A White House spokesperson said Mr. Trump wants to determine if Mr. Biden’s aides were acting in place of him on important decisions.
“The American people deserve to know the extent to which unelected staffers and an autopen acted as a proxy president due to the incompetence and infirmity of the previous president,” deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said. “President Trump was elected to restore the integrity and transparency of the office, and answering the question of who was actually running this country for four years is well within the president’s rights.”
