The United States is a republic, not a monarchy. But that has not stopped President Donald Trump from taking a similar approach to declaring his predecessor’s administration invalid. This week, he issued a memorandum to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether Biden’s White House advisers had used an autopen device to fabricate Biden’s signature on official documents.

Though the memo did not go so far as to accuse Biden officials of using sorcery to bewitch him, it argued that they took advantage of his allegedly compromised mental state to wield presidential powers. “This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” it said. “The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”

Trump had already signaled that his focus was on Biden’s pardons of various people whom he sees as political enemies. “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,” he wrote in a post on his personal social media website in March. “In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!”

Conservative media outlets have written extensively about the previous administration’s use of an autopen in recent months, insinuating that it was a sign of Biden’s incapacity. There is no evidence that it was used to sign things against the former president’s will. Focusing on it is a throwback of sorts to the Obama years, when Obama began to use the device while traveling overseas. He first used the autopen to sign an extension of the PATRIOT Act in 2011, during a weeklong tour of Europe. In 2013, he used it while vacationing in Hawaii to sign the bill that prevented the U.S. government from going over the so-called “fiscal cliff.” Less notable uses also followed, such as signing routine annual proclamations......

Since Trump’s particular issue with the autopen centers around pardons, it’s worth noting that the historical precedents for that power are much looser than for any other official act a president might undertake. The modern practice is for would-be recipients to apply to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which reviews cases and makes recommendations to the president. If the application is approved, the office gives pardon recipients a formal document bearing the president’s seal and signature.

That is a modern convenience rather than an actual legal requirement, however. Trump himself has ignored or bypassed the pardon attorney and issued almost all of his pardons at his personal whim. Past presidents have also wielded the pardon power by proclamation instead of individualized certificates. They have issued mass pardons to ex-Confederate officials, to formerly polygamous Mormons, Vietnam War draft evaders, and so on without difficulty.