(Adnkronos) – Donald Trump declares “null, void and without any effect” the pardons granted by Joe Biden because, he claims, they were not signed with a real pen. In particular, Trump says he intends to consider null and void the preventive measures to protect the members of the Congressional commission of inquiry for the assault on Congress, which he called “the committee of political bandits”.
In the post on Truth Social, published in the middle of the night, Trump speaks of pardons signed with “Autopen”, that is, a mechanical instrument that reproduces someone’s signature. “In other words, Biden didn’t sign them, and more importantly, he didn’t know anything about it,” the post reads, effectively bringing Trump back to what he had told reporters on Air Force One hours earlier, albeit in less peremptory terms.
“It’s not my decision, it will be up to a judge, but I say they are null and void because I’m sure Biden had absolutely no idea what was going on and that someone used the autopen to sign the pardons,” Trump said. With the statements to reporters and with the post, Trump refers to a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank very close to his administration, regarding the use of the automatic pen for the signing of the pardons granted by Biden on January 20, his last day at the White House.
“The necessary pardon documents were not explained or approved by Biden – the tycoon also states – he knew nothing and whoever did this may have committed a crime. So the members of the commission, who have destroyed all the evidence obtained in the two years of witch hunt against me and many other innocent people, know that they are subject to the highest level investigations”.
Trump’s words once again seem to shake the very foundations of the American constitutional system, since the Constitution establishes that the president has the power to grant pardons and there are no provisions for revoking them. Furthermore, case law indicates that Trump is wrong in saying that the president must physically sign pardons: in 1929 the Justice Department ruled that “it is entirely up to the president to decide” the method in which to grant the measure. And last year a federal court ruled that a presidential pardon could even be unwritten.
Not only did the members of the commission of inquiry, including Trump’s hated Liz Cheney and the other only Republican, Adam Kinzinger, both now without a seat in Congress because of their anti-Trump stance, receive pardons from Biden to protect them from the certain retaliatory criminal actions by the Trump Justice Department. Even the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, and Anthony Fauci received the preventive pardon, as well as, of course, the most discussed ones that Biden signed for his son Hunter and for all members of his family.
