On Sept. 24, 2025, White House spokesperson Margo Martin posted a video on X introducing a "Presidential Walk of Fame" outside the West Wing, complete with portraits of presidents in gold frames. The video panned past faces of previous commanders-in-chief before reaching an image meant to represent former President Joe Biden: a photo of an autopen, or automatic signing machine.
The video appeared to reference Trump's fixation with Biden's alleged use of an autopen to sign various documents. Trump has repeatedly claimed that Biden's use of an autopen meant the former president's official actions were not actually made by him.
Rumors about Biden's purported use of an autopen have spread through posts on Facebook, X and Reddit, as well as reports from media outlets including Fox News, Newsweek and The Independent.
These rumors originated from a March 6 X post by the Oversight Project, an investigative arm of the conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation — the same group that authored Project 2025. "WHOEVER CONTROLLED THE AUTOPEN CONTROLLED THE PRESIDENCY," the X post read.
?WHOEVER CONTROLLED THE AUTOPEN CONTROLLED THE PRESIDENCY?
We gathered every document we could find with Biden's signature over the course of his presidency.
All used the same autopen signature except for the the announcement that the former President was dropping out of the… https://t.co/CC3oJUkNr4 pic.twitter.com/mtNrZsALDu— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) March 6, 2025
The Heritage Foundation and its Oversight Project have a reported history of spreading misleading political information; the group did not respond to a request for comment for more information about its methodologies.
These reports are not credible evidence demonstrating Biden's purported frequent use of an autopen, given that the digitized version of official documents from the U.S. government all use the same image of the president's signature, regardless of who is in office. Even assuming Biden did use an autopen to sign pardons, that still would not automatically void the pardons.
According to CNN, Biden did use an autopen to sign at least one piece of legislation — although he would not be the first: Presidents have signed documents using signature copying devices since Thomas Jefferson in 1804; former President Barack Obama was reportedly the first to sign actual legislation with an autopen in 2011.
It is unclear how often Biden signed other documents, including executive orders and pardons, via autopen. We were unable to reach Biden's team as of this writing. In a June memo launching an investigation into Biden's use of the autopen, the White House alleged that because "Biden suffered from serious cognitive decline," there could be a possibility that his advisers "secretly used the mechanical signature pen to conceal this incapacity," which would be unconstitutional.
As of this writing, the investigation is ongoing and the White House has not publicly provided any evidence to support its claims. Biden denied the Trump administration's allegations to The New York Times in July.
Biden's signature
The Oversight Project, in its X post, claimed it "gathered every document we could find with Biden's signature over the course of his presidency. All used the same autopen signature except for the the announcement that the former President was dropping out of the race last year."
Biden's purported autopen signature (top) compared with the signature from his letter dropping out of the race (bottom). (Federal Register / Oversight Project on X)
Fox News claimed it "examined more than 20 Biden-era executive orders documented on the Federal Register's office between 2021 and 2024 and found each had the same signature." The Federal Register is the U.S. government's daily publication for executive orders and other official documents.
While it is true that many of Biden's executive orders carry a signature matching the one posted by the Oversight Project, the National Archives, which runs the Federal Register, said in an emailed statement that official documents published in the Federal Register use a copy of the president's signature that "comes from one graphic file."
"At the beginning of each administration, the White House sends a sample of the President's signature to the Office of the Federal Register, which uses it to create the graphic image for all Presidential Documents published in the Federal Register," communications staff at the National Archives wrote.
As the Federal Register's digitized documents do not represent what the signature looks like on the original documents, the Oversight Project's claim lacks credibility.
Neither the project nor Fox News provided evidence that these are autopen signatures, other than the fact that the purported autopen signature looked different from the signature Biden used in a letter announcing he would drop out of the presidential race in 2024.
Left: An image of Biden's purported autopen signature. Right: An image of Biden's signature from the Federal Register's digitized copy of a Jan. 26, 2021, executive order Biden signed by hand. (Oversight Project / Federal Register / Snopes Illustration)
Furthermore, there are photos of Biden signing — by hand and in person — executive orders that carry signatures matching the purported autopen signature. For example, see this Jan. 26, 2021, Getty Images photo matching this executive order on criminal justice and this July 8, 2022, photo matching this executive order on reproductive rights. One image shows him virtually signing an August 2022 executive order cited by the Oversight Project as supposed evidence that Biden used an autopen (he had COVID-19 at the time and was isolating).
Biden signs an executive order on Jan. 26, 2021. A close-up and rotated screenshot of his signature in this image shows similarities to his alleged autopen signature but it does not appear to be an exact match. (Getty Images / Snopes Illustration)
The image of Biden signing the order by hand seems to show a signature similar to the purported autopen one but does not appear to have the loop in the "R" pictured on the Federal Register's copy, demonstrating that, as the National Archives said, the original signature on the documents is not reflected by the digitized versions.
As Fox News noted, many of President Donald Trump's executive orders from both of his terms also use the same signature.
A sampling of Trump's signature on his executive orders published by the Federal Register. (Federal Register / Snopes illustration)
Finally, Trump's claim that Biden specifically signed pardons via autopen is not credible. Unlike the Federal Register documents, digitized copies of Biden's pardons on the U.S. Department of Justice website carry differing signatures.
For example, see the Jan. 6 committee pardon compared to these pardons from 2022, 2023 and 2024, in which Biden writes "Joseph" in three of them and "J" in the 2022 version for his first name, among other differences, particularly in the "R" and "Jr."; none of these signatures are an exact match for the purported autopen one.
A sampling of Biden's signature on pardons from 2022, 2023 and 2024 as well as his Jan. 6 committee pardon from 2025 (from left to right). (U.S. Justice Department / Snopes Illustration)
According to a May 2024 CNN story citing an anonymous White House official, Biden did use an autopen to sign a bill extending funding for the Federal Aviation Administration while in San Francisco. The same story said "the use of the autopen has been a rarity in the Biden administration. The White House has gone to great lengths at times to fly physical bills to Biden while he's traveling abroad, including a $40 billion Ukraine aid package the president signed while in South Korea in 2022 and a 2022 bill to avert a government shutdown while the president was on vacation in St. Croix."
Other reputable news outlets, including The Associated Press, covered the White House's efforts to fly bills both to South Korea and St. Croix.
History of the presidential autopen
Thomas Jefferson was the first U.S. president to use a version of the autopen, then known as the polygraph, just a year after its invention in 1803, according to the National Museum of American History. He called it "the finest invention of the present age."
A polygraph at Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States. (Getty Images)
According to the National Park Service's official Facebook page for the White House and President's Park, the first commercially successful autopen was not developed until 1942, when it "quickly gained popularity in the government."
"Harry Truman was said to have been the first to put the autopen to use, but Lyndon B. Johnson was the first to be photographed using it. In 1968 the National Enquirer published an article featuring those photos titled "The Robot that Sits in for the President," the post said.
The page noted that it would be "incredibly challenging" for a president to sign, by hand, the thousands of pieces of paper requiring a signature — "from bills and executive directives to letters and photographs."
In 2005, former President George W. Bush asked his Justice Department to determine whether signing legislation passed by Congress with an autopen is constitutional, given that the U.S. Constitution dictates in Article I, Section 7 that presidents "shall sign" bills into law. The government's lawyers determined legislation can be signed via autopen without violating the Constitution — and that the Department of Justice "has long recognized" that the president "may sign a document, within the meaning of various statutory signing requirements, by directing that his signature be affixed to it by another (Page 115).
To make this determination, the Justice Department's decision cited many other instances where various U.S. government lawyers decided a copy of the president's signature suffices for official documents, including pardons (see Page 113).
In fact, a 2024 decision by a federal court said pardons and commutations by the president don't even have to be in writing (see Page 13). "Nothing in the Constitution restricts the President's exercise of the clemency power to commutations that have been rendered through a documented writing," the decision said (Page 15).
However, Bush never used an autopen to sign legislation; presidents reportedly did not sign legislation with autopens until Obama used one while in France to sign a four-year extension of the Patriot Act, a post-9/11 bill meant to combat terrorism, according to numerous news articles. Obama's use became the subject of controversy: 21 Republicans signed a letter calling on Obama to personally re-sign the Patriot Act and commit to signing legislation by hand. It is unclear whether Trump has signed legislation or policy with an autopen, although some reports suggest he signed campaign items for sale via the device.
Thus, the claim Biden used an autopen to sign official documents may be somewhat truthful, but it lacks context. There is credible evidence that Biden's executive orders and pardons purportedly signed via autopen were actually signed in person and by hand. Furthermore, presidents have used versions of autopens since the 1800s due to the vast number of documents requiring the commander-in-chief's signature.