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The Justice Department quietly replaced several presidential pardons posted online this week after observers noticed that multiple documents appeared to contain identical versions of President Donald Trump’s signature — a discovery that set off questions about whether the signatures were authentic.
The pardons, dated Nov. 7, included clemency for former New York Mets star Darryl Strawberry, disgraced former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and former New York police sergeant Michael McMahon. Forensic document examiners confirmed to The Associated Press that the signatures on several of the originally posted pardons were identical — a statistical impossibility if the signatures had been handwritten.
Within hours of intense online scrutiny, the Justice Department replaced the files with versions containing visibly different signatures. In a statement, DOJ spokesperson Chad Gilmartin attributed the issue to a “technical error” and “staffing issues caused by the Democrat shutdown,” saying one authentic signature had mistakenly been uploaded multiple times.
“There is no story here other than the fact that President Trump signed seven pardons by hand,” Gilmartin said. The White House offered a sharper rebuke, with spokesperson Abigail Jackson writing that Trump “signed each one of these pardons by hand as he does with all pardons,” and urging reporters to scrutinize “Joe Biden’s countless auto penned pardons, not a non-story.”
Trump, who has long criticized Biden for using an autopen to execute official documents, even installed a photo of the device in his self-styled “Presidential Walk of Fame” in the West Wing. Republican lawmakers have seized on Biden’s use of the autopen as evidence of supposed “diminished faculties,” claiming in a recent Oversight Committee report that the practice renders many of Biden’s actions invalid.
But legal scholars say that even if Trump had used an autopen — which the administration denies — it would not affect the legality of the pardons.
“The key to pardon validity is whether the president intended to grant the pardon,” said Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law professor emeritus. “Any re-signing is an obvious, and rather silly, effort to avoid comparison to Biden.”
Democrats quickly called for clarity. Rep. Dave Min of California, a member of the House Oversight Committee, argued that the identical signatures raised questions about “who is actually in charge of the White House,” echoing Republicans’ own criticisms of Biden.
The latest controversy comes as Trump accelerates a wave of clemency benefiting political allies, donors and figures who claim they were targeted by a “weaponized” Justice Department. Strawberry, who overcame drug abuse and legal troubles following his star MLB career, was pardoned for 1990s tax and drug convictions. Casada, sentenced in September to three years in prison for orchestrating a fraudulent mailer scheme, also received clemency. McMahon, convicted this spring for acting as a foreign agent for China, was pardoned as well.
McMahon’s attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, said he did not know that the documents had been swapped until contacted by reporters.
“It is and has always been our understanding that President Trump granted Mr. McMahon his pardon,” he said.
Whether the signature flap fades or feeds further partisan debate, legal experts agree on one point: the validity of the pardons is not in doubt.
