Autopen – The Machine That Signs for the President
In Washington, a device that few have heard of has been at work for decades. Now it has become the center of one of the most serious constitutional disputes in American history.
In the basement of the White House, in a room accessible to a handful of officials, sits an unremarkable device about the size of a desktop printer. It has a mechanical arm into which almost any pen or marker can be inserted. When it receives a signal, the arm comes to life and traces a signature—fluid, confident, with just the right pressure on the paper. The signature of the President of the United States.
This is the autopen.
For decades, it was one of Washington’s most carefully guarded bureaucratic secrets. In America, celebrities use autopens to produce autographs, corporate executives to dispatch routine correspondence, and politicians—well, politicians prefer not to discuss it. To admit to using an autopen is to confess that the signature you received, that intimate personal gesture meant to prove that someone important devoted a moment of attention to you, was executed by a machine.
But in 2025, the autopen ceased to be a technological curiosity. It became the center of a constitutional crisis.
A Device with History
The autopen’s origins trace back, improbably, to Thomas Jefferson. The third President was fascinated by a contraption called the polygraph—not the lie-detector variety, but a mechanical copying device that allowed one to write an original while simultaneously creating a duplicate. Jefferson purchased two: one for the White House, another for his estate at Monticello. He was, one might say, the first American President to automate his signature.
The modern autopen emerged in the nineteen-thirties. A device called the Robot Pen operated on a principle similar to a phonograph record: a signature was “recorded” into a special matrix and then reproduced on demand. In 1942, Robert M. De Shazo, Jr., refined the technology for the United States Navy. Soon, autopens populated the offices of congressmen, senators, and executive-branch officials. De Shazo estimated that at one point more than five hundred such devices were operating in Washington alone.
Which President first employed the autopen? Sources disagree. Some point to Harry Truman, though he apparently confined its use to checks and routine correspondence. Others credit Gerald Ford as the first to openly acknowledge the machine’s existence. But the first President to sign a law with an autopen—a piece of legislation that became binding law—was Barack Obama.
On May 27, 2011, Obama was in France when Congress passed an extension of three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. The deadline expired at midnight. Rather than dispatch the document across the Atlantic, the President authorized the use of the autopen. The law went into effect.
Republicans protested. Doesn’t the Constitution require the President to personally sign a bill? Does a mechanical signature possess any legal force whatsoever?
The answer, as it turned out, had been waiting in a drawer for years.
The Opinion That Sat in a Drawer
In 2005, during the George W. Bush Administration, the Department of Justice issued a detailed legal opinion on a matter that seemed, at the time, purely academic: could a President sign a bill by directing a subordinate to affix his signature using an autopen?
The memorandum, titled “Whether the President May Sign a Bill by Directing That His Signature Be Affixed to It,” prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel, runs thirty pages of dense legal reasoning. Its conclusion is unequivocal: yes, the President may sign legislation in this manner.
Central to the opinion is a concept lawyers call the “principle of signatures.” It reaches back to seventeenth-century English common law and holds that a person required by law to sign a document need not do so in his own hand. He may authorize another person to sign on his behalf—through formal written authorization or, in certain cases, by direction given in his presence—and such a signature carries the same legal force as one executed personally.
Lord Lovelace’s Case from 1632, Nisi prius coram Holt from 1701, Combe’s Case from 1614—these ancient English precedents, cited in the Justice Department opinion, establish a principle that has survived centuries: if an authorized agent signs on behalf of a principal, the law treats the signature as the principal’s own.
To be precise: this concerns not the signing of a document by a legal representative acting in his own name on behalf of another—the validity of which raises no questions—but the situation in which Smith writes “Jones” because Jones gave him permission to do so.
Translating this principle to the American Constitution requires care, however. Article I, Section 7 provides: “If he approve he shall sign it.” Does the word “sign” mean the personal, physical act of putting pen to paper? Can the President delegate this act?
Here the Justice Department opinion introduces a crucial distinction: the President cannot delegate the decision to sign a bill. That decision—approval or veto—is a personal, non-delegable prerogative of the head of state. But the physical act of affixing the signature itself? Once the decision has been made, that is a technical, ministerial function which the President may assign to a subordinate. What is essential, however, is that clear evidence exists that the President consciously decided to sign the specific bill and authorized a specific person to affix the signature on his behalf.
The Biden Affair: When a Machine Signs Pardons
For years, the autopen remained a legal curiosity. Obama used it on several occasions, primarily under time pressure. Trump, ironically, also acknowledged employing it. But only the events of 2025 elevated the autopen to a matter of the highest constitutional significance.
In October 2025, the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Republican Congressman James Comer, published a report titled “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception at the White House.” If its account is accurate, the report describes one of the most serious constitutional crises in American history.
According to the report, President Joe Biden suffered progressive cognitive decline throughout his presidency. His closest advisers allegedly concealed this condition from the public, controlling every aspect of the President’s life—from the number of stairs he had to climb to the use of teleprompters even at small, intimate gatherings. Hollywood producers, including Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, reportedly advised on the “presentation” of the President during State of the Union addresses.
But the most troubling findings concern the decision-making process—specifically, how executive acts were authorized and signed.
The report reveals that thirty-two of fifty-one pardons issued by Biden were signed by autopen. The fact alone is not illegal; the 2005 opinion permits the practice. The problem lies in how these signatures were authorized.
Consider the pardons of January 19, 2025—Biden’s last full day in office. Among those pardoned were members of the Biden family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, and members of the January 6th committee. According to testimony from Jeff Zients, the White House Chief of Staff, the authorization process proceeded as follows:
Bruce Reed and White House Counsel Ed Siskel attended a meeting with President Biden.
Reed or Siskel (Zients “assumed”) conveyed the details of the President’s decision to Rosie Po, a Zients deputy.
Po called Zients, who was at home, and relayed the information.
Zients, without contacting the President or anyone who had attended the meeting, authorized Po to send an email from his account, signed with his initials, approving the use of the autopen.
Po sent the email: “Approving use of autopen to execute all pardons below. Thanks, JZ.”
Someone in the Staff Secretary’s office operated the autopen.
Zients testified that he does not know who actually operated the device.
This chain—from the alleged presidential decision, through oral transmissions, to mechanical signature—raises a fundamental question: can we be certain that President Biden actually made these decisions? That he understood what he was signing?
It should be noted that the 2005 Justice Department opinion addressed exclusively the signing of bills passed by Congress, not presidential executive acts such as pardons. Presidential pardons are governed by different constitutional provisions (Article II, Section 2) and were not the subject of detailed analysis in that opinion. Nevertheless, similar principles regarding the delegation of the physical act of signing—while preserving the President’s personal decision—have been applied in practice to other presidential documents as well.
The Fifth Amendment in the White House
The Oversight Committee report contains a detail that should trouble anyone, regardless of political sympathies. Three key witnesses—Dr. Kevin O’Connor (the President’s physician), Annie Tomasini (Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations), and Anthony Bernal (Chief of Staff to the First Lady)—refused to answer questions, invoking the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.
Dr. O’Connor declined to answer whether he had ever been instructed to lie about the President’s health. He also refused to answer whether he believed the President was incapable of performing his duties.
Tomasini declined to answer whether anyone in the Biden family or the White House had instructed her to lie about the President’s health.
Bernal declined to answer whether any unelected official or member of the President’s family had performed presidential duties.
The right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment is a fundamental constitutional right. But there is a certain paradox: individuals who for four years assured the public of the President’s excellent condition now refuse to answer questions about that very condition—for fear of self-incrimination.
Can an Autopen Invalidate a Pardon?
On November 28, 2025, Donald Trump posted a statement on Truth Social declaring that he considered “every document” signed by Biden via autopen to be invalid, because the device had been used “illegally” without the President’s participation.
From a legal standpoint, the matter is not as simple as Trump suggests.
First, the 2005 Justice Department opinion—issued under a Republican administration—unequivocally permits the use of autopens to sign legislation and other executive acts. If the President made the decision and authorized the autopen’s use, the signature is legally valid.
Second, in 2024, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Rosemond v. Hudgins that presidential pardons need not be in writing to be valid. A President may pardon orally—which further suggests that the form of signature, manual or mechanical, is irrelevant to the validity of the act.
Third, the Oversight Committee report is not itself a legal document. It is a political document prepared by the Republican majority without participation from the Democratic minority (which, as the report notes, posed a total of only three and a half hours of questions during forty-seven hours of testimony).
But there is another side to this coin.
The 2005 opinion clearly and repeatedly emphasizes that the President must personally make the decision to sign a bill. As the memorandum states: “We do not suggest that the President may delegate the decision to approve and sign a bill. Only that, having made this decision, he may direct a subordinate to affix the President’s signature.” The opinion assumes the existence of evidence that the President actually made a conscious decision to sign a specific bill and authorized a specific person to affix the signature. Without meeting these conditions, the entire legal construction based on the principle of signatures loses its foundation.
What happens, however, when legitimate doubts exist about whether the President was capable of consciously making such a decision? When the “chain of authorization” consists of a series of oral transmissions, without any documentation confirming the President’s will? When the President’s physician refuses to answer questions about his capacity to serve, invoking protection against self-incrimination?
The Committee report states plainly: “The Committee considers invalid all executive acts signed by autopen without appropriate, contemporaneous, written authorization traceable to the President’s personal assent.”
This is not (yet) a court ruling. But it opens the door to an unprecedented legal dispute.
The Larger Question
At its core, the autopen affair concerns something more than mechanical signatures. It concerns the limits of executive power—and who actually exercises it.
The Constitution vests executive power in the President. Not his advisers, not his family, not his Chief of Staff. The President. But the modern presidency is a vast bureaucracy in which thousands of decisions are made daily in the head of state’s name. Where does the line fall between permissible delegation and impermissible usurpation of power?
Under normal circumstances, the question remains academic. The President delegates routine decisions while reserving matters of highest importance for himself. The system functions because everyone assumes that at critical moments, it is the President who decides.
But what happens when a President—due to illness, age, or other circumstances—loses the capacity to make such decisions? The Twenty-Fifth Amendment provides a procedure for transferring power to the Vice-President in cases of presidential incapacity. But the procedure requires the cooperation of the Vice-President and a majority of the Cabinet—or the President himself.
What if those closest to the President have an interest in concealing his incapacity?
Mike Donilon, Biden’s chief campaign strategist in 2024, testified before the Committee that he received nearly four million dollars for his work—with another four million contingent on electoral victory. Anita Dunn and her husband Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal attorney, possessed assets estimated at sixteen to forty-eight million dollars. Dr. O’Connor had longstanding business relationships with the Biden family.
The report suggests that these financial and personal ties may have motivated those closest to the President to conceal his condition—and to make decisions on his behalf.
Implications for the Future
Regardless of how the Biden affair concludes, the autopen debate has exposed a gap in the American constitutional system—or rather, it has revealed that the legal construction accepting the autopen as permissible assumes a level of honesty and good faith in White House operations that cannot be guaranteed by legal norms alone.
The 2005 opinion rests on the assumption that the President actually makes decisions and the autopen serves merely for their mechanical execution. It does not contemplate a scenario in which the very fact of the President’s decision-making becomes subject to legitimate doubt. There is no mandatory protocol documenting the authorization process for autopen use. There is no independent mechanism for verifying the President’s capacity to make decisions beyond the politically fraught Twenty-Fifth Amendment. And there is no clear judicial procedure enabling challenges to the validity of executive acts when grounds exist for questioning the President’s conscious assent.
The Oversight Committee report recommends that the Justice Department review all executive acts of the Biden Administration—particularly pardons—to determine which were properly authorized. It also recommends that the Medical Board of the District of Columbia investigate Dr. O’Connor’s conduct for possible violations of medical ethics.
Trump has announced that he will invalidate acts signed by autopen without presidential participation. Whether he has the legal basis to do so remains unclear.
One thing is certain: the machine that quietly labored for decades in the White House basement has emerged from the shadows. And it turns out that the question “who signs for the President?” may be a question about who really governs.
Epilogue: The Machine and Its Limits
In its 2005 opinion, the Justice Department cites a precedent from 1824. Attorney General William Wirt considered whether the Secretary of the Treasury could sign documents with a stamp instead of a pen if illness prevented him from writing. Wirt answered in the affirmative—provided the Secretary retained control of the stamp and could see what was being signed.
“It might otherwise happen,” Wirt wrote, “that the public might lose the services of an able officer, from a mere temporary disability in his right hand.”
But Wirt added words that now sound prophetic: “The stamp may be forged; but so also may the autograph of the Secretary. The superior facility of forging a stamp may be a very good reason why the legislature should, by a positive law, prohibit the use of it, and define the manner in which the signing shall be done. They have not yet done it.”
It should be emphasized, however, that the presence requirement applied primarily to situations lacking formal written authorization. As the 2005 opinion indicates, when an official issues detailed, written authorization for the use of an autopen for specific documents—while retaining full control over the decision-making process—the requirement of physical presence at each act of signing is not necessary. What is essential is ensuring that the signature reflects the official’s “conscious and deliberate act.”
Two hundred years later—it still hasn’t been done.
It is also worth underscoring the difference between what is legally permissible and what is prudent. Even if the use of an autopen is constitutionally permitted—provided the conditions described in the 2005 opinion are met—this does not mean it should be employed routinely, especially in matters of the highest constitutional significance, such as pardons or executive orders with far-reaching consequences. The practice of using an autopen under time pressure to sign congressional legislation (as in Obama’s case in 2011) is one thing. Using it to pardon members of one’s own family or senior officials is an entirely different category of action—even if it formally falls within the bounds of the law.
Robert Nogacki is an attorney and managing partner at Skarbiec Law Firm, specializing in international tax law and corporate structures.
Founder and Managing Partner of Skarbiec Law Firm, recognized by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna as one of the best tax advisory firms in Poland (2023, 2024). Legal advisor with 19 years of experience, serving Forbes-listed entrepreneurs and innovative start-ups. One of the most frequently quoted experts on commercial and tax law in the Polish media, regularly publishing in Rzeczpospolita, Gazeta Wyborcza, and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. Author of the publication “AI Decoding Satoshi Nakamoto. Artificial Intelligence on the Trail of Bitcoin’s Creator” and co-author of the award-winning book “Bezpieczeństwo współczesnej firmy” (Security of a Modern Company). LinkedIn profile: 18 500 followers, 4 million views per year. Awards: 4-time winner of the European Medal, Golden Statuette of the Polish Business Leader, title of “International Tax Planning Law Firm of the Year in Poland.” He specializes in strategic legal consulting, tax planning, and crisis management for business.
