Trump says he’s 'canceling' 92% of all documents signed by Biden, citing 'illegal' autopen use. Here’s what’s at risk for Americans

In a Truth Social rant presented without evidence, Trump said “radical left lunatics” around Biden “took the presidency away from him” and used the autopen illegally while the ex-president “was not involved” (1). He claimed that the alleged violations would encompass 92% of the documents Biden signed. Trump also threatened Biden with perjury charges if he denies the improper use.

Trump’s declaration followed an October Republican-led Oversight Committee report that claimed Biden’s aides “exercised presidential authority and facilitated executive actions without his direct authorization, including misusing the autopen.”

The report, however, doesn’t provide any concrete proof, and Biden’s aides shot back, saying that he authorized all autopen signings. President Biden himself previously refuted Trump’s autopen accusations, saying he alone made decisions about what he signed and that suggestions to the contrary are “ridiculous and false.”

Use of the autopen — or any device that replicates the president’s signature on official documents — to sign laws, orders or pardons is perfectly legal and can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson. In recent years, Presidents Obama, Biden and, yes, even Trump himself, have all used the device — though Trump claimed his use of the autopen was only to sign “very unimportant papers,” and that using it for pardons was “disgraceful.”

Despite that assertion, however, any Trump attempt to nullify what Biden signed with the autopen could result in steep financial ramifications for millions of Americans.

The cost of an autopen crusade

Undoing Biden-era decisions is nothing new for Trump. In fact, he overturned 67 of Biden’s 162 executive orders and multiple presidential memorandums upon taking office in January, and then another 19 executive actions in March.

Now, his threat to nullify “all executive orders, and anything else” signed with the autopen suggests that he could take aim at laws like the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA, which contains clean energy tax credits and other climate-related grants and initiatives, as well as a $2,000 cap on the cost of prescription drugs for those on Medicare, can only be repealed by Congress.

Undoing the law, if Trump attempted to do so, would claw back prescription discounts for an estimated 19 million Americans who reportedly save an annual average of $400 on drug costs — or an overall total of roughly $7.6 billion.

The Trump administration has already tried to interfere with the IRA’s implementation and the new One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) “dismantles or narrows many of the clean energy tax credits,” according to Mintz Insights (2). However, recent events suggest the president is for lowering prescription drug prices and supports the Medicare drug negotiation program introduced by the IRA.

Another existing Biden policy that Trump could reverse, hitting Americans in the pocketbooks, is the former’s 2023 executive order “Increasing Access to High-Quality Care and Supporting Caregivers,” which directs agencies to lower costs of things like child care and improve jobs and support for caregivers.

While there’s no specific dollar amount estimate for what a reversal could cost taxpayers, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notes that the executive order also updates the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) and “limits the amount that families pay [for child care] to 7% of their household income,” along with further benefits for low income and other “vulnerable families.” The HHS estimates the order lowers childcare costs for 100,000 children.

Meanwhile, a 2021 executive order designed to “strengthen the resilience of America's supply chains” could also face the chopping block. As Daily Kos pointed out, the order “laid the groundwork for the CHIPS and Science Act,” which provided billions in funding for semiconductor research and the creation of related jobs (3). The outlet estimates that reversing the order would mean “renegotiating grants, disrupting supply contracts, and killing momentum in domestic semiconductor manufacturing,” costing taxpayers up to $500 million.

All told, canceling more Biden-era decrees could carry a price tag in the billions for Americans already reeling from soaring cost-of-living increases. That said, legal experts largely agree that the law and the Constitution prevent Trump from actually carrying out many of his stated plans to undo autopen-signed documents.

Law and (executive) order

While presidents routinely undo the executive orders of their predecessors, the legal wrench in Trump’s plan to overturn Biden’s executive orders “and anything else” signed with an autopen lies in the “anything else” part of that threat.

"Trump is free to revoke all of Biden's executive orders, whether or not Biden personally signed them,” Ed Whelan, lawyer and former president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote on X. “But he doesn't have the same freedom with respect to 'anything else' (e.g., bills enacted by Congress, pardons) that Biden directed be signed by autopen."

Given presidents can’t legally overrule bills or laws passed by Congress, it would seem that the Medicare prescription drug cap built into the IRA is safe. Trump also can’t charge Biden with perjury for disputing Trump’s claims, given Biden never testified under oath about his autopen use. And when it comes to pardons, which Trump also threatened to revoke, including for those perceived as political enemies — like Dr. Anthony Fauci, or President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden — that also seems like a no-go.

Not only does a president not have the authority to overturn pardons, but Georgetown University constitutional law professor David Super noted to States Newsroom that, technically, the POTUS doesn’t even legally need to write the pardon down and sign it to make it official in the first place (4).