„The automatic pen” was a convenient tool for many administrations at the White House. That is until it became the center of a scandal.
In the bustling White House filled with high-ranking officials with top responsibilities, Jack Shock had something special to do. Shock, who served as the director for presidential letters and messages in the administration of Bill Clinton, was the only one authorized to handle the autopen, the president’s automatic pen, a mechanical device that reproduced identical copies of Clinton’s signature.
What was this machinery used for? Let's say a letter to a state official or a birthday card for a not-so-close political ally needed the president's signature, Shock recounted to The Washington Post.
The letter was typed on the pale blue paper used by the Clinton administration. Then, Shock, or sometimes an intern ("of course, a trusted intern"), would take the letter to the old Executive Office Building, where the president's cabinet secretary guarded the automatic signing machine.
This invention, the size of a drawing table, had its own room. Shock would select one of Clinton's three signatures, making sure to choose the signature used for the repeated presidential letter signings. A staff member would position the letter, then start the machine.
"You had to press with both knees on the lever, almost like a spinning wheel," Shock said. In the meantime, a mechanical arm that facilitated this operation appeared.
The Second Most Guarded Thing in the White House
During George H.W. Bush's presidency, Jim Cicconi, deputy chief of staff, was responsible for the autopen, being the only person in the West Wing authorized to use it "for all matters," according to a 1989 memorandum. "Everything had to go through me," Cicconi said.
Bush mainly used the device to sign personalized correspondence, such as birthday wishes and Christmas greetings. For example, books written by Bush or biographies about him were signed this way. And the 41st president always wanted to sign documents issued by commissions, legislative acts, and executive orders himself.
A significant part of Cicconi's responsibility involved maintenance. The pens - whether handheld, automatic, or of another nature - couldn't be ordinary. The National Archives insisted on archival-quality ink to prevent fading. The matrices - ribbed pieces of plexiglass that controlled the pen's movements - were carefully monitored for wear; a shaky signature was a sign that one needed replacing.
"If you made a mistake, there was a real sense that you were in trouble," Cicconi recalled.
JFK Was Dependent on the Automatic Pen
The automatic pen was patented in the U.S. in 1803, and President Thomas Jefferson wasted no time in acquiring and using the device.
Today's autopen machines are different from the original ones used by Jefferson; in his time, it was known as a polygraph machine and copied entire letters while the person wrote, according to the Shapell Manuscript Foundation.
It is believed that Harry S. Truman was the first president to use a modern autopen machine.
John F. Kennedy's dependence on the automatic pen inspired a book, "The Robot That Helped Shape a President," although his administration was reluctant to admit its use. His successor, however, had no such reservations: Lyndon B. Johnson allowed the National Enquirer to feature his autopen machine in a 1968 article titled "The Robot Standing in for the President."
And an interesting fact about this tool: back when Shock worked at the White House, if, for example, the president was aboard Air Force One while the autopen was signing a letter in his name at the White House, the title would include the phrase "FROM AIR FORCE ONE" - "just to clarify that he wasn't in the office that day, and no one was trying to pull anything or sign in his absence," explained the former advisor. "It had to reflect where he was, even though it was an automatic pen," he added.
Today's autopen machines are much smaller than their predecessors, closer in size to a toaster. And unlike the matrices that directed the mechanical pen of Clinton's autopen, many of today's machines scribble pre-programmed digital signatures with their robotic arms.
Another Object Trump Can't Stand
You may remember, but the automatic pen was recently involved in a scandal in the United States. "Apart from the rigged 2020 presidential elections, the Autopen scandal is the biggest political scandal in American history!!!" Donald Trump posted on Truth Social last month.
Several objects have sparked Trump's fury over the years: from the mundane showerhead ("You know, I have this beautiful hair - when I shower, I want water to flow on me"), to the paper straw ("These things don't work"), and LED lights ("The light's no good - I always look orange"). But perhaps none has drawn his ire like the automatic pen. Specifically, Joe Biden's automatic pen, as reported by the American daily.
It has been a problem for Trump since March when a branch of the conservative Heritage Foundation organization published a report, "The Autopen Presidency," suggesting that Biden systematically relied on the automatic signing system for presidential orders. Among the documents signed this way were preemptive pardons for officials Trump and his allies considered enemies, such as Anthony S. Fauci and members of the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump floated the idea that those pardons should be revoked, suggesting that Biden "knew nothing about them." The former president vehemently rejected any insinuation that he allowed, without any knowledge, his staff to use an automatic pen on his behalf.
The White House counsel's office has begun reviewing tens of thousands of emails about Biden's pardon decisions signed by the automatic signature in the final weeks of his administration. Senate Republicans have promised to launch an investigation, and House Republicans have already done so; Representative James Comer (Republican from Kentucky), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has summoned senior officials from the Biden administration to ask who authorized the use of the automatic signature. Ironically, Comer signed these subpoenas with a digital signature, as reported by NBC News, a common practice among federal legislators.
The Washington Post was not granted permission to photograph President Trump's automatic pen. The newspaper requested an image from the White House but received none. An official only confirmed that it is in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
"I never use it," Trump told reporters in March. "I mean, we could use it, for example, to send a letter to a young person, because it's cute," he added.
Is It Legal for a Law to Be Signed with an Automatic Pen?
After the controversy stirred by Trump, the question arises whether a president can use this machinery to enact a bill. The answer is yes, according to the 2005 guidelines from George W. Bush's Department of Justice, which provide that the president "need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves," but can direct a "subordinate" to sign a bill, "for example, by autopen."
Although granted the exemption, Bush never actually used the automatic pen to sign a bill and was never sent a legislative bill by courier, opting instead, in a notable case, to rush from Texas to Washington to sign the controversial Terri Schiavo bill. The "Palm Sunday Compromise," as it was colloquially known, allowed the federal court to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo, who was connected to life support machines, caught in a dispute between her husband, who wanted to remove her feeding tube, and her parents, who contested the decision. Probably due to the vital importance of the bill, Bush chose to forego the autopen exemption.
Barack Obama was the first president to do so, using an automatic pen to sign an extension of the Patriot Act, which was set to expire while he was in France at the G-8 summit in 2011.
Biden used his automatic pen in 2024 to sign a provision extending funding for the Federal Aviation Administration by one week while Congress finalized the long-term funding bill.
However, former Republican congressman from Georgia, Tom Graves, warned in 2011 that Obama was setting a "dangerous precedent" and highlighted legal opinions that contradicted the Department of Justice's guidance. "Personally, I don't think there's a problem with the automatic signing feature being activated by the signer. But I do think there's a responsibility to read the document and sign it. Assigning it to someone else - that's the debatable area here," he emphasized.