Trump Declares Biden ‘Auto-Pen’ Pardons Void in Darkly Ominous Post

Whatever else President Donald J. Trump wants to accomplish during his second interim as president, he continually puts it all at political risk with his tireless need to relitigate events that the American people, for better or worse, have declared to be history – all to presumably punish those who he believes wronged him.

To considerable criticism, I wrote that the election itself negated all criminal investigations into Trump for all known allegations as of November 2024 – the American people were fully informed as to all concerns and went to the ballot box to hand Trump a more decisive win than nearly anyone predicted.

The jury had spoken. And yet that doesn’t seem to be enough – at least to me. But it now looks as though Trump wants to punish the January 6th Committee members as demonstrated by a new Truth Social post in which he ominously declares the Biden pre-emptive pardons to be null and void due to the use of an auto-pen (Whether one was used or not). In so doing, Trump puts himself at risk by opening wounds that the voters otherwise had closed.

There are, quite obviously, many problems with everything above. Very few powers are more sweeping than the presidential pardon power. Anyone in possession of one is almost untouchable on the underlying facts. If the government wants to assert that a pardon had no force or legal effect, then it should have to somehow first prove a set of facts so sweeping as to be all but impossible.

Trump takes it as a matter of course that an auto pen was used and yet that underlying assumption hasn’t been proven. Moreover, auto-pens and signature stamps are dangerous precisely because they’re enforceable or people wouldn’t even have them to begin with! Furthermore, even if President Biden wasn’t aware of the fact that he was signing a pardon, the underlying presumption would be that the pardon itself is valid if not fraudulently obtained by the person presenting it.

There are so many obstacles to anyone wanting to vitiate a pardon it is almost silly. But most of this is just a pretense to bring about investigations and, perhaps – arrests and prosecutions of the committee members, not legitimate criticism about the legality of the pardons.

This is a bad idea, not just for the health of the American body politic but it’s a bad idea for Donald Trump and his political future. He is going to have enough of a headwind to fight as doubts about the economy and trade settle in. As a president who has already served in office, his honeymoon period will be (Or has been) shorter than nearly anyone else coming into a new four year term.

There remain very real concerns about his role in January 6th and other problems shortly after the last election and he would be better served concentrating on his victory in 2024 and not looking to settle scores coming out of 2020 and keeping those questions open.

He won the opportunity to redraw the contours of government to his liking – something difficult enough in the absolute best of times – he will need all the political will he can get. Jim Jordan and the Republicans in Congress live to investigate past Democratic administrations, criminalizing Congressional investigations will cast a dark shadow over even his own biggest supporters on Capitol Hill just as surely as it does over Democrats.

He really does need to be careful. Polls already show that his political capital is waning over the economy. Fast forward just 90 days from now with a market that remains either down or sluggish, Social Security slogging through a mire, undelivered tax refunds due to DOGE cuts to staff, and prices on the rise throughout the country due to trade instability – much of this might come to be seen as highly dangerous political baggage.

It is vastly easier to get things done in an environment where one has 47% approval ratings than 31% or even 26%. Some things just aren’t worth the price. Even Donald Trump should consider the risk-reward quotient on this one.

There is also the fact that prosecuting the January 6th committee in this context goes against absolutely everything that this country stands for, but that’s a completely separate argument.