President Donald Trump began his Mar-a-Lago golf weekend on Friday by alleging that whoever controlled the “autopen” was the true president during the Biden administration. He ended the weekend aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, declaring that President Joe Biden’s pardons are “null and void” and vowing that members of the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack would be investigated, despite Biden having granted them pardons.

Trump, apparently using information from the Heritage Foundation, alleged that the pardons were signed via an automated system called an “autopen,” and threatened the January 6 Committee members, saying they are now “subject to investigation at the highest level,” and accusing them of being behind the signing of the pardons by a mechanical device.

Experts say this is false on all fronts: The pardons were signed by President Biden, the online copies at the National Archives were digitally signed, as has been the practice for decades, but there are photos of Biden signing many of the pardons, and even if they were mechanically signed, they are still valid.

“Even if Biden did use an autopen, the Justice Department (DOJ) in 2005 stated: ‘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,’ so Trump’s argument is not legally valid,” Newsweek reported. “This autopen allegations are part of MAGA’s larger conspiracy that claims the Biden White House was covering up for his alleged cognitive decline while in office.”

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Trump appeared prepared to pursue “voiding” the pardons, telling reporters on Air Force One it’s not his decision to make, but rather, it is up to the legal system.

“It’s not my decision. That’ll be up to a court. But I would say that they’re null and void, because I’m sure Biden didn’t have any idea that it was taking place,” President Trump alleged. And somebody was using an autopen to sign off and to give pardons to, as an example, just one example, but the J6 unselect committee.

“I don’t think Biden knew anything about it,” Trump repeated, before launching into a series of debunked conspiracy theories.

Trump also claimed that the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack “deleted and destroyed all of the information that took them over a year to get,” a claim popular among MAGA conspiracy theorists — including President Trump — but long ago found to be false.

The New York Times strongly pushed back against Trump’s claims:

“There is no power in the Constitution or case law to undo a pardon, and there is no exception to pardons signed by autopen. But Mr. Trump’s assertion, which embraced a baseless right-wing conspiracy theory about former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., was a new escalation of his antidemocratic rhetoric. Implicit in his post was Mr. Trump’s belief that the nation’s laws should be whatever he decrees them to be. And it was a jolting reminder that his appetite for revenge has not been sated.”

Trump followed his “null and void” claim board Air Force One with an early morning rant, writing at 12:35 AM Monday: “The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.”

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“In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level. The fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden!”

At the time President Biden signed the pardons, some had considered them controversial. But the Associated Press had called it “an extraordinary use of executive power to guard against potential ‘revenge’ by the new Trump administration.”

Legal experts and political observers alike are strongly denouncing Trump’s allegations.

“Trump CANNOT legally reverse Biden’s pardons. The bigger question is what improper and illegal actions will be taken by Trump’s DOJ and FBI that would fly in the face of those Biden pardons,” declared MSNBC legal contributor and correspondent Katie Phang,

“Welcome to autocracy. The Republic we have known for the last 240 years is gone. This is going to keep getting worse. Much worse. The courts mean nothing, the law means nothing, Congress is irrelevant. He is a malignant psychopath,” wrote attorney and former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski, a former Republican now the editor-in-chief of the liberal news site MeidasTouch.

Policy expert Neera Tanden, a high-level official in both the Obama and Biden administrations, asked, “does this mean everything with a Trump autopen signature is void in this Administration and the last? Because there’s a lot by autopen in every Administration. Some enterprising lawyers may want to sue.”

Tanden’s claim is supported by The Guardian, which cited Smithsonian Magazine’s report that ‘described how presidents since Thomas Jefferson have used devices to help them sign documents with greater efficiency. Jefferson, the third president from 1801 to 1809, used a polygraph, a device he found so useful he said he ‘could not live without it’.”

SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah commented, “We went to sleep in a democratic Republic. We woke up in a fascist state. That is the truth after reading this AM Trump has openly violated federal court orders and declared all pardons Pres Biden issued to those involved in Jan 6 investigation are now ‘void.’ History is warning us where this goes.”

CNN’s Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor said on-air, “there is no such thing as an ‘un-pardon’ power.”

Fox News’ Jessica Tarlov remarked, “For those who claimed Joe Biden went too far with his pardons, what do you say now? Donald Trump is not a king. He needs to stop trying to act like one.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Q: “On the Biden autopen. Are those executive orders, those pardons…now null and void?”

Pres. Trump: “I think so. It’s not my decision. That’ll be up to a court. But I would say that they’re null and void because I’m sure Biden didn’t have any idea that it was taking place.” pic.twitter.com/p0a9AqRbck

— CSPAN (@cspan) March 17, 2025

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Image: Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz via Flickr

President Donald Trump, just 54 days into his second term, declared himself “the chief law enforcement officer in our country” and labeled two major news organizations, CNN and MSNBC, as “illegal,” while further denouncing their coverage as “illegal.” His remarks Thursday afternoon were delivered to officials at the U.S. Department of Justice, in an appearance that shattered a decades-old norm designed to insulate the department from political interference—a safeguard established in response to President Richard Nixon’s abuses of power. Trump’s statements have drawn sharp criticism for their authoritarian tone and direct attack on press freedom, sparking alarm.

“I believe that CNN and MSNDC,” said Trump (video below), using his own derogatory twist on MSNBC’s name, “who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party. And in my opinion, they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal. What they do is illegal.”

Trump also “rallied against the press,” in general, “claiming they are influencing judges and, without any evidence, claiming the media works in coordination with political campaigns, which is not allowed in the news industry,” The Hill reported.

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It has been widely reported that during his first term in office, Fox News host Sean Hannity spoke with Trump “nearly every weeknight.”

“These networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative. And it has to stop, it has to be illegal, it’s influencing judges and it’s really, eh, changing law and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal and they do it in total coordination with each other,” the President alleged.

Trump’s remarks were just a part of a speech that lasted more than one hour, during which he “delivered an insult-laden speech that shattered the traditional notion of DOJ independence,” as Politico reported. During those remarks, Trump also “labeled his courtroom opponents ‘scum,’ judges ‘corrupt’ and the prosecutors who investigated him ‘deranged.'”

“With the DOJ logo directly behind him, Trump called for his legal tormentors to be sent to prison.”

It is not the first time the President, who is a convicted felon, has declared MSNBC “illegal.”

Last month, when MSNBC host Joy Reid left the news network, Trump unleashed a torrent of hatred.

“Lowlife Chairman of ‘Concast,’ Brian Roberts, the owner of Ratings Challenged NBC and MSDNC, has finally gotten the nerve up to fire one of the least talented people in television, the mentally obnoxious racist, Joy Reid,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform. “Based on her ratings, which were virtually non-existent, she should have been ‘canned’ long ago, along with everyone else who works there. Also thrown out was Alex Wagner, the sub on the seriously failing Rachel Maddow show. Rachel rarely shows up because she knows there’s nobody watching, and she also knows that she’s got less television persona than virtually anyone on television except, perhaps, Joy Reid.”

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Trump’s Friday afternoon assault on the media was swiftly criticized.

“This is what a dictator sounds like,” wrote U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI).

“Journalism is legal,” declared award-winning investigative journalist Lindsay Beyerstein. “Criticizing the president is legal. Being a Democrat is legal. Nothing Donald Trump is ranting about here is a crime and he’s disgracing himself and the Department of Justice by talking this way.”

Journalist Matt O’Brien observed, “Trump wants to get rid of freedom of speech because he wants to be a dictator. And unlike his first term, he now has a government full of fascists who are eager to make that a reality.”

Marlow Stern, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Journalism at Columbia University’s Columbia Journalism School wrote: “sounds like putin.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist Kyle Whitmire wrote simply: “Enemy of the Constitution.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Trump at the DOJ: “I believe that CNN and MSNDC, who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party. And in my opinion, they are really corrupt and they are illegal. What they do is illegal.” pic.twitter.com/kiVyZBWs3r

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 14, 2025

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Image via Reuters 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is “basically admitting” the White House “lied” about the mass firings of tens of thousands of federal government employees, a legal expert is alleging, based on her remarks on Friday. Many of not most of the terminated government workers were ordered to be reinstated by two separate federal courts on Thursday. Judges ruled the terminations were likely unlawful.

According to The New York Times, one judge “said in his lengthy ruling that the government’s contention that the firings of the probationary employees had been for cause, and not a mass layoff, ‘borders on the frivolous.'” Another judge “concluded much the same and made it clear that he thought the manner in which the Trump administration had fired the probationary workers was a ‘sham.'”

Leavitt previously has been criticized for having exhibited “a fundamental misunderstanding of the separation of powers enumerated in the U.S. Constitution since 1789,” and for making false claims in general.

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On Friday, having been asked to clarify a previous statement, Leavitt told reporters that the Trump administration will be “fighting back” against those two rulings “by appealing, fighting back by using the full weight of the White House Counsel’s office and our lawyers at the federal government who believed that this injunction is entirely unconstitutional.”

Leavitt insisted that the injunction — presumably both injunctions blocking the administration from additional mass firings and requiring that the fired probational employees be reinstated — are unconstitutional.

She claimed that, “for anybody who has a basic understanding of the law, you cannot have a low level district court judge filing an injunction to usurp the executive authority of the president of the United States.”

That is false, and violates the separation of powers, as legal experts and Supreme Court cases have made clear, although it is a claim the Trump administration has repeatedly asserted.

“That is completely absurd, and as the executive of the executive branch, the president has the ability to fire or hire. And you have these lower level judges who are trying to, uh, block this president’s agenda,” she stated (video below).

That appears to be the remark that drew the attention of attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration policy expert and senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

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“Pay attention here to how the White House is basically admitting to have lied about why these people were fired,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote. “Now they claim this was the President’s command and must not be overruled. But when the firings were happening, they claimed on paper it was for ‘performance’ reasons.”

Andrew Heineman, legislative director for U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) wrote: “It sounds very much like Leavitt just admitted that the firings were part of Trump’s ‘agenda.'”

Leavitt went on to suggest that there is a conspiracy of activist judges working to “block” President Trump.

“It’s very clear, and as I just cited, I was appalled by the statistic when I saw it this morning in three or, uh, in one month in February, there have been 15 injunctions of this administration in our agenda,” she said.

“In three years under the Biden administration, there were 14 injunctions. So, uh, it’s very clear that there are judicial activists throughout our judicial branch who are trying to block this president’s executive authority.”

She went on to praise President Trump and his legal team, saying that despite being “indicted nearly 200 times,” he was able to become President.

Trump has not been indicted nearly 200 times. He was indicted four times, and faced a total of 91 felony charges.

“We are going to fight back,” she insisted, “and as anyone who saw President Trump up in his legal team fighting back, they know how to do it. He was indicted nearly 200 times, and he’s in the Oval Office now because all of the indictments, all of these injunctions have always been unconstitutional and unfair.”

“They are led by partisan activists, who are trying to usurp the will of this president and we’re not going to stand for it.”

Critics blasted Leavitt’s grasp of the law.

Semafor’s David Weigel posted headlines of federal judges, or, “low level district court” judges, as she said, blocking other President’s actions.

“You sure about that? You sure about that?” he asked, mockingly.

Attorney and Democratic activist Aaron Parnas, responding to Leavitt’s claim that you cannot have a  judge block a president’s wishes, responded: “You actually can. That’s why we have three branches of government.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

When asked if the Administration will comply with court orders on fired federal workers, WH Press Secretary Leavitt says the orders are unconstitutional: You cannot have a low level district court judge filing an injunction to usurp the executive authority of the President… pic.twitter.com/XtwBzkkjjo

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 14, 2025

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Image via Reuters