Autopen Model 50 from the International Autopen Company. The culprit?
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: Benjamin Olding, International Autopen Company) Details Source DMCA
"I don't know when it was signed, because I didn't sign it."
That was Donald Trump last Friday on the south lawn of the White House as he left for another weekend of golfing.
The "it" that he denied signing was a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act to round up and swiftly deport 261 migrants, men and women, his administration says are members of a violent gang from Venezuela. No warrants, no charges, no evidence, no hearings... off to a brutal prison in El Salvador.
Trump had been asked about the proclamation because a federal judge had ordered the government to hold off on the deportation and provide some legal justification before proceeding, all of which had been ignored.
District Judge James E. Boasberg asked why the proclamation was "essentially signed in the dark" so that flights could begin immediately. The judge was furious at being stonewalled in court by lawyers for the White House on when they received his orders and why they didn't turn the planes around. Also, why this ancient law was resurrected as justification.
So, a rare reporter doing his job asked the person who signed the proclamation when he signed it.
Not me, said Trump, who holds the title of president and would customarily be the person to sign such an order.
"Other people handled it," Trump said. "But Marco Rubio's done a great job. And he wanted them out, and we go along with that. We want to get criminals out of our country."
Interestingly, Trump's well-known signature does appear on the digital image of the proclamation available for viewing with the Federal Register. More directly to the point, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said Trump did actually, personally sign the proclamation.
Cheung tried to deflect from his discrepancy with his boss by saying Trump meant he didn't sign the actual proclamation, which was declared in 1798. No one was buying that baloney.
So what's going on here? There are several options.
Whether Trump actually signed the proclamation or not, at this point there is no satisfactory answer to that question.
-- Trump signed it and forgot. Hardly reassuring for someone occupying the Oval Office. Invoking a wartimes act to deport a couple of hundred people with no legal justification being presented is lawlessness personified. If he forgot, then there are legitimate questions about his mental capabilities. It's the kind of thing he always accused Joe Biden of. Given Trump's ramblings on other occasions, his mental capacity seems more than suspect. Someone in Congress should ask for a competency test.
-- He signed it and lied about it because of all the negative publicity arising from the judge's growing anger over White House lawyers refusing to comply with his order. Trump passed the buck to Marco Rubio, just like he always passed the buck to Rudy Giuliani. Closest person always gets tossed under the bus. Trump never takes responsibility for unpopular actions. This is not good news for Rubio, who apparently agreed to trade his genitals and backbone for the title of secretary of state.
-- Cheung lied. An autopen was used to provide Trump's signature, because staff members thought either he wouldn't understand the ramifications, or would confuse the issue, or they just didn't want to waste time to try to track Trump down to get a signature when the planes were on the runway. Or, they didn't feel it was necessary to get his actual signature, just chalk the whole thing up, like all the other stuff, to the campaign. Page whatever. Getting rid of bad immigrants. He'll be fine with that. Get the autopen! This is the one I suspect is true.
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