The device has been used in one form or another since at least Franklin Roosevelt's administration, but Donald Trump wants to cast doubt on pardons.

Legal scholars say that the Constitution doesn’t require a pardon’s direct human signing, and subsequent judicial decisions and legal memoranda support an autopen’s use for similar purposes.

President Donald Trump has claimed that pardons signed by his predecessor Joe Biden are invalid. His reasoning: They were allegedly signed with an autopen, a signing machine used by the U.S government for decades.