Former President Joe Biden has been accused of using the same automatic signature to sign a raft of documents while in office, a new report says.
The Oversight Project, a self-described investigative arm of the right-wing think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, challenged the legitimacy of orders signed by the Demcorat and claimed that an “autopen signature” was used across almost “every document” it could find.
“We gathered every document we could find with Biden’s signature over the course of his presidency,” it posted on X Thursday alongside several screenshots of documents including the signature.
“All used the same autopen signature except for the the [sic] announcement that the former President was dropping out of the race last year.”
The exact number of documents reviewed was not immediately clear.
Former President Joe Biden prepares to sign executive orders on affordable healthcare in the Oval Office of the White House on January 28, 2021 (AFP/Getty)
The Oversight Project shared three examples of Biden’s signature on official documents. They included two executive orders signed in August 2022 and December 2024 and a screenshot from the final line of Biden’s letter withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election in July after questions were raised about the 82-year-old’s mental acuity.
The two executive orders appeared to use the same autosignature while the signature on the withdrawal letter was different.
Fox News claimed that it examined more than 20 executive orders signed by Biden between 2021 and 2024 “at random” and found each had the same signature.
However, an examination of President Donald Trump’s executive orders during his first and second administrations found “the signatures were also the same,” the outlet said.
Twenty-five of Trump’s signatures on the Federal Register’s website from across both terms also found signature matched, according to the Daily Mail’s analysis.
President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on March 6, 2025 (EPA)
Barack Obama is said to be the first president to use autopen to sign legislation. Its use in the Biden administration was a rarity and the White House often went to great lengths to ensure that the former president physically signed bills, according to CNN.
It included Biden signing a $40 billion Ukraine aid package while in South Korea in 2022 and a 2022 bill to avert a government shutdown while on vacation in St. Croix in the Caribbean.
Sharing a letter sent to the Department of Justice Wednesday, Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey tweeted that he was “demanding the DOJ investigate whether President Biden’s cognitive decline allowed unelected staff to push through radical policy without his knowing approval.”
He added: “If true, these executive orders, pardons, and all other actions are unconstitutional and legally void.”
Bailey claimed that GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson reported that White House officials acted as gatekeepers from allowing him to meet with Biden.
“Staff limited Biden’s ability to speak with others and limited the sources of information he consumed,” he wrote in the letter.
The Independent has contacted the White House and the Heritage Foundation for more information.
