Good day all. Over the last week or two a potential major issue has bubbled up. This was the use by the Biden Maladministration to use an Autopen with a preregistered “Signature” of Joe Biden digitally stored. In response, (And there have been a few responses), President Trump has issued very restrictive use cases for the Autopen.
Since the moment President Trump retook the Oval Office, (After having it fumigated of course), he has been signing all sorts of executive orders and a few pieces of legislation. He has not been using an Autopen. Now he has issued orders on when an Autopen may be used. Here are the details from the New York Post:
An internal memo drafted Thursday, March 14th, by Trump staff secretary William Scharf, who for the past two months has publicly described and presented documents to Trump for his signature in the Oval Office, lays out the restrictive current use of the autopen.
“We have gone significantly further than [the] need for express approval, both in this Administration and in the First Trump Administration,” Scharf wrote.
“Our practice around autopen usage is far more restrictive than most previous administrations. We do not use the autopen for documents that exercise the powers of the Presidency. So, for example, we do not use the autopen for executive orders, presidential memoranda, decision memoranda, nominations, appointment orders or commissions, or bills to be signed,” he wrote.
I saw something as I was preparing this post that Obama signed a major bill via Autopen. However, he was out of the country at the time and the bill was time sensitive. There were still questions on the legality of using the Autopen. George W. Bush never used an Autopen. Biden? Almost everything was signed by an Autopen which is why people are wondering if Biden was involved at all or if a staffer was doing it on his or her own with no consent from Biden.
“We do not use the autopen even for more routine purposes, such as the invitation of foreign leaders to the White House. The President personally signs all of these, in the presence of witnesses. We will occasionally use the autopen when a single document requires multiple presidential signatures, or when multiple copies of a single document require signing, but only after the President has personally signed off and only at his direction.”
It sounds like President Trump has put in some very strict safeguards. These will shoot down attempts to question his signatures if and when the Constitutional Crises explodes and it’s determined that Joe Biden didn’t sign anything of note during his failed presidency.
A memo dated Jan. 28 and also reviewed by The Post grants Scharf and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles the authority to use the autopen “for all matters.” Scharf’s deputy and the president’s executive clerk are allowed to make the call at Scharf’s direction.
I suspect there is some sort of log set up on the use of the Autopen and who authorized it and for what purpose. I’m sure that if a congressional oversight committee asks to see the logs, they will be quickly delivered with the request that they not be destroyed like the documents from the bogus January 6th commission.
The White House director of correspondence, who manages lower-stakes public communications such as congratulatory messages to Americans on significant life milestones such as birthdays, is also allowed to use the autopen “for standardized policy materials after clearance by [Scharf]” and for “Presidential messages in accordance with specific direction,” according to the January memo.
So the Director can’t just go and fire up the Autopen without permission? Good!
“Under our Administration, the autopen is housed in the Office of Presidential Records,” Scharf wrote Thursday. “It is housed there because OPR is not a ‘production’ office, meaning that they do not independently produce documents. That ensures that a single office cannot both create a document and have it ‘signed.’ This is a crucial control mechanism that ensures that the President’s signature, and the authority that flows from it, is protected.”
Scarf added: “I view it as my weightiest responsibility as the President’s Staff Secretary to ensure that documents issuing from this White House under the President’s signature reflect the actual expressed will of the President, and that he has the opportunity to personally review the finalized copy of every such document when it is presented for his signature.”
This is a nice, public and very transparent policy, unlike the secretive crap we had from the maladministration of the worst president in American history, Jill Hunter Joe Biden. If the use of the Autopen was abused under the previous administration, then I think we’re going to need either legislation, or, potentially, a full on amendment to the Constitution. Autopens of one sort or another have been around since the founding of this country.
Originally, these were mechanical devices and they required actual input. The signer would manipulate a pen or other writing implement that was mechanically connected to one or more devices that would allow the duplication of the original signature as it happened. Since the digital age, it’s far to easy to generate a digitized signature and store it, and then simply print it out as part of a document print job. You can see how this could be abused. Hopefully, President Trump’s policy on the use of the Autopen will carry forward to future presidents.
Thatisall
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