Trump revokes every Biden autopen executive order

Donald Trump has revoked every executive order Joe Biden signed with an autopen - escalating the battle over the legitimacy of the ailing ex-president's administration.

'I am hereby canceling all executive orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the autopen did so illegally,' Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday.

'Joe Biden was not involved in the autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury.'

Presidents may legally undo executive orders signed by their predecessors, including pardons, however there is no legal mechanism to retract clemency after it is granted. 

Biden signed 162 executive orders during his tenure.

Among the most controversial were the autopen-signed pardons of Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, and members of the January 6 committee.

Biden also pardoned family members - James B. Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John T. Owens, and Francis W. Biden - on his last full day in office.

The Democrat's only hand-signed pardon during his final months in office was also his most pivotal - the order signed for his recovering cocaine-addict son, Hunter.

The 83-year-old claims he personally authorized every single pardon and commutation where the autopen was used. 

The device, which has been used by Republican and Democratic presidents including Trump, replicates signatures.

Trump says he only uses the autopen to sign insignificant papers and that it should not be used for important orders, such as pardons.

The president has frequently called into question the legitimacy of the orders, citing Biden's declining cognitive health and reports that senior White House aides frequently made executive decisions on his behalf.  

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee last month asked the Justice Department to carry out a review of every single executive order made by Biden.

It released a lengthy report which described a deeply 'flawed process', akin to a 'presidential pardon game of telephone' used in the Biden White House.

'The Committee has found that President Biden's aides coordinated a cover-up of the president's diminishing faculties,' it said.

The GOP report shed light on the never-before-exposed chain of command, which appears to have relied heavily on secondary and tertiary information passed along by decision makers who were not even present in certain meetings.

Investigators describe the structure as 'lax', and the instances of the 'clemency actions taken in the final days of the Biden presidency' are called the 'most flagrant.'

One particular instance laid out in the report highlights ex-White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients admitting that not all decisions made by the president were formally documented.

The pardons of Biden family members in the final days of the administration were communicated 'second-hand' to a Zients aide, Rosa Po, who informed Zients about the pardons.

He then 'verbally authorized the use of the autopen from home' without knowing who actually executed the signatures.

Acting through his aide's email, Zients approved the autopen's use for the clemency actions without confirming with Biden that those were in fact his wishes.

Due to concerns about the president's mental state and the opaque approval process, the committee has deemed all autopen-signed executive actions without direct written presidential consent to be invalid.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said in October that her team was 'reviewing the Biden administration's reported use of autopen for pardons.'