Donald Trump is escalating his campaign to dismantle Joe Biden’s legacy — and this time, he’s threatening criminal charges.
In a sweeping and legally questionable declaration posted on social media, the president said he intends to cancel “most” of Biden’s executive orders on the grounds that they were not personally signed by Biden. Trump claimed, without evidence, that Biden’s inner circle forged his signature using an autopen — the mechanical device presidents have used for decades to sign documents remotely or at scale.
“The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President,” Trump wrote, alleging that Biden “was not involved in the Autopen process.” He went further, threatening: “If he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury.”
The accusation is extraordinary. No U.S. president has ever attempted to prosecute a predecessor over the use of a signing device that the Justice Department explicitly approved in 2005. Trump himself used an autopen during his first term. Yet this latest attack reflects a deeper political strategy: undermine the legitimacy of Biden’s final years in office and reframe governance itself as a matter of personal authenticity.
A Claim With No Evidence — and Major Constitutional Questions
Trump’s argument hinges on an unproven theory: that Biden, due to alleged cognitive decline, did not authorize major executive actions and that aides secretly signed sweeping policy directives without his consent.
Republicans — particularly the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and House Oversight chair James Comer — quickly cheered Trump on. Both have spent years amplifying partisan claims that Biden was too impaired to govern and that staffers manipulated the autopen to hide it. But none of those allegations have been backed by evidence.
Democrats dismissed the claims as conspiracy-mongering. Legal scholars, meanwhile, warned that attempting to nullify past pardons, bills, or executive actions on autopen grounds would ignite a constitutional emergency — one that could boomerang onto any future president, including Trump himself.
Conservative legal commentator Ed Whelan, writing on X, noted that Trump can revoke Biden’s executive orders through ordinary presidential power. But voiding Biden-era pardons or laws signed via autopen “is not within that freedom,” he stated.
A Broader Offensive Against Biden’s Legacy
Trump’s threat comes amid a broader push to aggressively reverse Biden-era immigration, climate, and criminal justice policies. In recent weeks, Trump has ordered reviews of Biden-approved asylum cases, halted processing for many Afghan nationals, and deployed additional immigration officers to cities to accelerate deportations — even of long-term residents with no criminal record.
This latest salvo, however, is more personal. It revives a claim Trump has repeated for months: that Biden was not mentally competent in the final stretch of his presidency and that his staff governed on his behalf. The allegations have become a centerpiece of the right’s argument about Biden’s legitimacy, even though Biden completed two terms without any official finding of incapacity.
A Dangerous Precedent
Nullifying a predecessor’s executive orders is routine. Accusing that predecessor of perjury is not.
If Trump acted on his threat, it would mark one of the most aggressive uses of presidential power against a former leader in American history. It would also thrust the autopen — a mundane tool used by presidents from Reagan to Obama — into the center of a constitutional crisis.
At stake is more than paperwork. Trump’s framing suggests a larger fight over who is considered a legitimate decision-maker in American democracy, and what evidence is required to challenge that legitimacy.
For now, the Justice Department hasn’t commented. Biden allies have dismissed the threat as “absurd.” But Trump’s supporters are openly celebrating — viewing the move as a symbolic purge of the Biden era and, perhaps, a preview of how far Trump is prepared to go in his second stint in office.
Whether this becomes a legal battle or remains political theater, one thing is clear: Trump is not just undoing Biden’s policies — he is working to rewrite the story of Biden’s presidency itself.
