U.S. presidents have used autopens since Thomas Jefferson; the first to use an autopen to sign a law was Barack Obama.
By Grace Deng
This story was updated on March 14, 2025, to include a statement from the National Archives that debunked The Heritage Foundation's alleged proof that former President Joe Biden used an autopen.
In mid-March 2025, a rumor spread online that former U.S. President Joe Biden used an autopen — an automatic signing machine — to sign official presidential documents.
The claim spread through posts on Facebook, X and Reddit, as well as reports from media outlets including Fox News, Newsweek and The Independent. A Fox News Facebook post about Biden's purported autopen signatures has nearly 200,000 reactions and more than 55,000 comments as of this writing.
These reports originated from a March 6 X post by the Oversight Project, an investigative arm of the conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation — the same group that authored Project 2025. "WHOEVER CONTROLLED THE AUTOPEN CONTROLLED THE PRESIDENCY," the X post read.
The Heritage Foundation and its Oversight Project have a reported history of spreading misleading political information; the group did not respond to a request for comment for more information about its methodologies.
These reports are not credible evidence demonstrating Biden's purported frequent use of an autopen, given that the digitized version of official documents from the U.S. government all use the same image of the president's signature, regardless of who is in office.
However, according to CNN, Biden used an autopen to sign at least one piece of legislation — although he would not be the first: Presidents have signed documents using signature copying devices since Thomas Jefferson in 1804; former President Barack Obama was reportedly the first to sign actual legislation with an autopen in 2011.
It is unclear how often Biden signed other documents, including executive orders and pardons, via autopen. We were unable to reach Biden's team as of this writing.
Biden's signature
The Oversight Project, in its X post, claimed it "gathered every document we could find with Biden's signature over the course of his presidency. All used the same autopen signature except for the the announcement that the former President was dropping out of the race last year."
Biden's purported autopen signature (top) compared with the signature from his letter dropping out of the race (bottom). (Federal Register / Oversight Project on X)
Fox News claimed it "examined more than 20 Biden-era executive orders documented on the Federal Register's office between 2021 and 2024 and found each had the same signature." The Federal Register is the U.S. government's daily publication for executive orders and other official documents.
While it is true that many of Biden's executive orders carry a signature matching the one posted by the Oversight Project, the National Archives, which runs the Federal Register, said in an emailed statement that official documents published in the Federal Register use a copy of the president's signature that "comes from one graphic file."
"At the beginning of each administration, the White House sends a sample of the President's signature to the Office of the Federal Register, which uses it to create the graphic image for all Presidential Documents published in the Federal Register," communications staff at the National Archives wrote.
As the Federal Register's digitized documents do not represent what the signature looks like on the original documents, the Oversight Project's claim lacks credibility.
Neither the project nor Fox News provided evidence that these are autopen signatures, other than the fact that the purported autopen signature looked different from the signature Biden used in a letter announcing he would drop out of the presidential race in 2024.
Furthermore, there are photos of Biden signing — by hand and in person — executive orders that carry signatures matching the purported autopen signature. For example, see this Jan. 26, 2021, Getty Images photo matching this executive order on criminal justice and this July 8, 2022, photo matching this executive order on reproductive rights. One image shows him virtually signing an August 2022 executive order cited by the Oversight Project as supposed evidence that Biden used an autopen (he had COVID-19 at the time and was isolating).
Biden signs an executive order on Jan. 26, 2021. A close-up and rotated screenshot of his signature in this image shows similarities to his alleged autopen signature but it does not appear to be an exact match. (Getty Images / Snopes Illustration)
The image of Biden signing the order by hand seems to show a signature similar to the purported autopen one but does not appear to have the loop in the "R" pictured on the Federal Register's copy, demonstrating that, as the National Archives said, the original signature on the documents is not reflected by the digitized versions.
As Fox News noted, many of President Donald Trump's executive orders from both of his terms also use the same signature.
A sampling of Trump's signature on his executive orders published by the Federal Register. (Federal Register / Snopes illustration)
According to a May 2024 CNN story citing an anonymous White House official, Biden did use an autopen to sign a bill extending funding for the Federal Aviation Administration while in San Francisco. The same story said "the use of the autopen has been a rarity in the Biden administration. The White House has gone to great lengths at times to fly physical bills to Biden while he's traveling abroad, including a $40 billion Ukraine aid package the president signed while in South Korea in 2022 and a 2022 bill to avert a government shutdown while the president was on vacation in St. Croix."
Other reputable news outlets, including The Associated Press, covered the White House's efforts to fly bills both to South Korea and St. Croix.
History of the presidential autopen
Thomas Jefferson was the first U.S. president to use a version of the autopen, then known as the polygraph, just a year after its invention in 1803, according to the National Museum of American History. He called it "the finest invention of the present age."
According to the National Park Service's official Facebook page for the White House and President's Park, the first commercially successful autopen was not developed until 1942, when it "quickly gained popularity in the government."
"Harry Truman was said to have been the first to put the autopen to use, but Lyndon B. Johnson was the first to be photographed using it. In 1968 the National Enquirer published an article featuring those photos titled "The Robot that Sits in for the President," the post said.
The page noted that it would be "incredibly challenging" for a president to sign, by hand, the thousands of pieces of paper requiring a signature — "from bills and executive directives to letters and photographs."
In 2005, former President George W. Bush asked his Justice Department to determine whether signing legislation passed by Congress with an autopen is constitutional, given that the U.S. Constitution dictates in Article I, Section 7 that presidents "shall sign" bills into law. The government's lawyers determined the president "need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law" and may "direct a subordinate to affix the President's signature to the bill."
However, Bush never used an autopen to sign legislation; presidents reportedly did not sign legislation with autopens until Obama used one while in France to sign a four-year extension of the Patriot Act, a post-9/11 bill meant to combat terrorism, according to numerous news articles. Obama's use became the subject of controversy: 21 Republicans signed a letter calling on Obama to personally re-sign the Patriot Act and commit to signing legislation by hand. It is unclear whether Trump has signed legislation or policy with an autopen, although some reports suggest he signed campaign items for sale via the device.
Thus, the claim Biden used an autopen to sign official documents may be somewhat truthful, but it lacks context. There is credible evidence that Biden's executive orders purportedly signed via autopen were signed in person and by hand. Furthermore, presidents have used versions of autopens since the 1800s due to the vast number of documents requiring the commander-in-chief's signature.
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