How We Got an Autopen Presidency
One slow, but corrupt, justification to maintain power at a time.
America is a constitutional Republic. Or at least it usually is. Evidence is growing that, sometime between 2021 and 2025, nameless activists, never elected and completely unaccountable to “the People,” usurped the power of our nation’s chief executive.
The flow of this evidence is now the subject of several “tell-all” books, the most successful of which has been Original Sin, co-authored by CNN News Anchor Jake Tapper. Original Sin currently tops the New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction.
The subtitle of Tapper’s book is “President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” It would be the literary equivalent of “The Cataclysmic Horror of the 1871 Chicago Fire,” coauthored by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.
Of growing concern, and the subject of pending legal inquiries, is the revelation that the indices of final Presidential approval, Presidential signatures, may have been affixed to documents of which President Biden was not, perhaps isn’t even today, aware.
The “signature of the President” is the ultimate proof of Executive Branch approval. It is required under White House protocol to approve diplomatic and formal Presidential functions utilizing White House grounds or staff. The Code of Federal Regulations says a Presidential signature is needed for proclamations bearing the Presidential seal, and “other decision documents of general applicability and with national legal effect.”
Congress has passed laws requiring the President’s signature on all Executive Orders, treaties and agreements sent to the Senate for ratification. The same goes for top court and Cabinet nominations.
And the Constitution directs, in Article 1, Section 7, clause 2, how laws are passed by Congress and presented to the President. “If he approve he shall sign it” is the clear wording.
“Signing” by an authority goes back thousands of years as a way to make a document “official.” Early signatures were hard to verify, so additional measures such as unique wax coverings, and stamps and seals with ornate and difficult-to-duplicate designs were used.
But the science of graphology (handwriting analysis) has matured, and signatures can now be analyzed for microscopic changes in pen pressure, variations in strokes, and flourishes. A real Presidential “signature” can be authenticated with great accuracy.
That is until technology produced the “autopen.” Modern autopens start by capturing the movement, muscle pressure, and hand position of dozens of actual signatures. A computer then identifies the unique “commonalities” in those signatures and produces an amalgam signature that replicates these common features. Career FBI graphologists can spot “auto-penned” signatures, but it isn’t easy and usually requires looking at original documents.
Power the Future, a DC-based nonprofit promoting energy jobs, reviewed eight Biden executive orders making major shifts in the policies on which he campaigned. They point out that, in no case, did the president speak publicly about these shifts. The group has asked the Trump Justice Department if the orders were signed by autopen without Biden’s knowledge.
Tapper’s book describes a White House with a sliding line for when the President needed to be “in” on a decision. As is the trend in current politics, the question wasn’t “what is right?” It was, “What proves the other side wrong?”
If self-promoters on the right accused Biden of being “feeble,” his advisors told him to “get angry and raise your voice.” If accused of being emotionally detached, staff told Biden to “think of how Beau would feel about this.” Biden would always get emotional regarding his oldest son who died of brain cancer in 2015.
When accused of senility, the last refuge of Biden’s inner circle was some form of “when the people vote for a president they vote for that president’s circle of advisors.” Except, I somehow missed their names on my ballot.
And in this last justification, at least during significant periods of time over the last few years, we lost our Constitutional republic.
Trent Clark of Soda Springs has served in the leadership of Idaho business, politics, workforce, and humanities education.