Trump blasts Biden, aides for use of autopen
President Trump on Tuesday blasted former President Biden, vowing to look into the use of the autopen during his presidency days after his predecessor announced he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
“Biden — look, It’s a very sad thing what happened, but we’re going to start looking into this whole thing with who signed this legislation. Who signed legislation opening our border? I don’t think he knew. I said, 'There’s nobody that can want an open border. Nobody,'" Trump told reporters when he arrived to the Capitol to help break the GOP impasse on the reconciliation bill. "And now I find out, that it wasn’t him. He autopenned it."
“Who was operating the autopen? This is a very serious thing," he continued. "We had a president that didn’t sign anything. He autopenned almost anything. He opened the borders of the United States of America."
The president previously questioned if Biden’s last-minute pardons in January are “void” because they were signed with an autopen. He doubled down on that argument over the weekend also, after audio from the former president's interview with a special counsel was unveiled.
Trump did not specify what legislation, order or action on immigration he was referring to Tuesday that may have been signed with an autopen.
Biden in 2021 ended “metering” of foreign nationals at the U.S.-Mexico border, which put an end to a Trump-era border management policy that limited the number of people processed at ports of entry. In 2023, Trump-era Title 42 expired, marking the end of a policy that allowed for the U.S. to turn away migrants almost immediately.
The former president also signed an executive order last June that aimed to turn away migrants seeking asylum who cross the southern border illegally at times when there is a high volume of daily encounters.
Biden had lobbied for a bipartisan legislation in the Senate that would have provided funding for additional Border Patrol agents and investments in technology to catch fentanyl and target drug traffickers, among other provisions, but Republicans blocked passage of that bill twice. Trump had urged Republicans to oppose the legislation, suggesting it could give Biden an election year win.
Trump continued to question if an autopen was involved in policies on immigration, suggesting that aides who were more aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) than Biden were in control.
“No sane person would sign it. You know who signed it? Radical-left lunatics that were running our country, and the autopen signed it, and they didn’t want him and they were disappointed in getting him because they wanted Bernie Sanders,” Trump said.
“And then after about two weeks, they said, ‘Wait a minute, this is a gift. He’ll do anything. We’re going to use the autopen.’ [And] they used the autopen on everything. He didn’t approve this," he added.
The president on Monday also questioned why Biden’s prostate cancer was not caught sooner.
“So look, it’s a very, very sad situation, and I feel very badly about it. And I think people should try and find out what happened," Trump said.