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On March 17, 2025, former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano told Wake Up America that a president’s pardon power is effectively untouchable and that the use of an autopen alone would not automatically void pardons issued at the end of a presidency. Napolitano made clear that the only real legal question is whether the president personally intended and authorized each pardon — if he did not, the pardon could be invalid.
Constitutionally, the pardon is one of the president’s most sacred and unassailable powers, a check on overreaching prosecutors and a necessary tool for mercy and justice. Conservatives should celebrate that the Constitution protects this authority from bureaucratic nitpicking; allowing aides or judges to nullify pardons would empower an administrative class hostile to the executive.
President Trump blasted the autopen pardons as “void, vacant, and of no further force” on social media, a political flourish more than a legal verdict, and Napolitano rightly called that a rhetorical move rather than a binding legal determination. The political theater is predictable, but the rule of law depends on evidence of intent and authorization — not on late-night posts or partisan declarations.
That distinction matters because we can no longer pretend process trumps reality: if an autopen was used without the former president’s knowledge, that would be a constitutional problem, not a smokescreen for partisan revenge. This is exactly why conservatives have been warning for years about administrative overreach and the dangers of delegating vital presidential functions to unaccountable staffers.
Make no mistake, the left’s instinct is to weaponize every procedural irregularity into a political cudgel — but the remedy is not to gut the pardon power or allow courts to become political referees. The upcoming legal fights should focus on a simple, factual question: did Joe Biden personally approve these pardons or was his signature merely stamped by a machine without his assent?
Americans who love liberty and the Constitution must watch this closely and demand transparency, not partisan posturing. If conservatives allow the precedent that aides can undo a president’s clemency or that social-media tweets can settle constitutional questions, we’ve already lost much more than a headline — we’ve lost a foundational pillar of executive authority.
