WASHINGTON — The Justice Department posted pardons online bearing identical copies of President Donald Trump\u2019s signature before quietly correcting them this week after what the agency called a \u201ctechnical error.\u201d<\/p>\n
The replacements came after online commenters seized on striking similarities in the president’s signature across a series of pardons dated Nov. 7, including those granted to former New York Mets player Darryl Strawberry<\/a>, former Tennessee House speaker Glen Casada and former New York police sergeant Michael McMahon. In fact, the signatures on several pardons initially uploaded to the Justice Department’s website were identical, two forensic document experts confirmed to The Associated Press. <\/p>\n Within hours of the online speculation, the administration replaced copies of the pardons with new ones that did not feature identical signatures. It insisted Trump, who mercilessly mocked his predecessor\u2019s use of an autopen, had originally signed all the Nov. 7 pardons himself and blamed \u201ctechnical\u201d and staffing issues for the error, which has no bearing on the validity of the clemency actions.<\/p>\n The questions about Trump\u2019s signature come amid a new flurry of clemency and weeks after the president claimed to not even know Changpeng Zhao, a crypto billionaire he pardoned last month. He said in an interview with 60 Minutes that the case had been \u201ca Biden witch hunt.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cA basic axiom of handwriting identification science is that no two signatures are going to bear the exact same design features in every aspect,\u201d said Tom Vastrick, a Florida-based handwriting expert who is president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very straightforward,\u201d said Vastrick, who compared the apparently identical images, now only visible through the online Internet Archive, with the replacements at AP\u2019s request.<\/p>\n Chad Gilmartin, a Justice Department spokesperson, said the \u201cwebsite was updated after a technical error where one of the signatures President Trump personally signed was mistakenly uploaded multiple times due to staffing issues caused by the Democrat shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no story here other than the fact that President Trump signed seven pardons by hand and DOJ posted those same seven pardons with seven unique signatures to our website,\u201d Gilmartin said in a statement to AP, referring to the latest wave of clemency Trump has granted in recent weeks. <\/p>\n White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson wrote in an email that Trump \u201csigned each one of these pardons by hand as he does with all pardons.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe media should spend their time investigating Joe Biden\u2019s countless auto penned pardons, not covering a non-story,\u201d she wrote. <\/p>\n Trump has been an outspoken critic of Biden’s use of the autopen to conduct executive business, going as far as to display a picture of one such device in place of a portrait of his predecessor in a new \u201cPresidential Walk of Fame\u201d he created along the West Wing colonnade. His Republican allies in Congress last month released a blistering critique<\/a> of Biden’s alleged \u201cdiminished faculties\u201d and mental state during his term that ranked the Democrat\u2019s use of the autopen among \u201cthe greatest scandals in U.S. history.\u201d <\/p>\n The Republicans said their findings cast doubt on all of Biden\u2019s actions in office and sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging a full investigation. <\/p>\n \u201cSenior White House officials did not know who operated the autopen and its use was not sufficiently controlled or documented to prevent abuse,\u201d the House Oversight Committee found. \u201cThe Committee deems void all executive actions signed by the autopen without proper, corresponding, contemporaneous, written approval traceable to the president\u2019s own consent.\u201d<\/p>\n On Friday, Republicans who control the committee released a statement that characterized Trump\u2019s potential use of an electronic signature as legitimate, which it distinguished from Biden\u2019s.<\/p>\n But Rep. Dave Min, a California Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, seized on the apparent similarities in the initial version of the pardons and called for an investigation of the matter, deploying the Republican arguments against Biden in a statement to AP that \u201cwe need to better understand who is actually in charge of the White House, because Trump seems to be slipping.\u201d<\/p>\n Regardless, legal experts say the use of an autopen has no bearing on the validity of the pardons. <\/p>\n \u201cThe key to pardon validity is whether the president intended to grant the pardon,\u201d said Frank Bowman, a legal historian and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law who is writing a book on pardons. \u201cAny re-signing is an obvious, and rather silly, effort to avoid comparison to Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of Trump\u2019s mercy has gone to political allies<\/a>, campaign donors and fraudsters who claimed they were victims of a \u201cweaponized\u201d Justice Department. Trump has largely cast aside a process that historically has been overseen by nonpolitical personnel at the Justice Department. <\/p>\n Casada, a disgraced former Republican speaker of the Tennessee House, was sentenced in September to three years in prison.<\/a> He was convicted of working with a former legislative aide to win taxpayer-funded mail business from state lawmakers who previously drove Casada from office amid a sexting scandal.<\/p>\n