The Trump administration is facing questions about its latest wave of pardons after the Justice Department this week replaced seven clemency documents bearing nearly identical copies of Donald Trump’s signature with revised versions featuring visibly different signatures.

The changes came after online observers noticed that the signatures on pardons issued November 7 — including those granted to former MLB star Darryl Strawberry, ex–Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, and former NYPD sergeant Michael McMahon — appeared to be carbon copies of one another. Experts said the signatures were so similar that they raised immediate concerns that the documents had been autopen-signed rather than hand-signed by the president.

Administration officials have blamed the initial documents on what they called a “technical error.” Justice Department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin said one of Trump’s signatures “was mistakenly uploaded multiple times due to staffing issues caused by the Democrat shutdown,” insisting that Trump hand-signed all seven pardons.

“The website was updated after a technical error,” Gilmartin said in a statement. “There is no story here other than the fact that President Trump signed seven pardons by hand.”

The White House echoed that line. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Trump “signed each one of these pardons by hand as he does with all pardons,” and accused the press of ignoring “Joe Biden’s countless autopenned pardons.”

The flap comes after a months-long Republican campaign accusing Biden of improper autopen use. Trump has repeatedly mocked Biden over the practice — even replacing Biden’s portrait in a self-created “Presidential Walk of Fame” with an image of an autopen. GOP lawmakers have claimed that Biden’s use of the mechanical signature device casts doubt on all his official actions.

But the controversy over Trump’s own pardon signatures risks undermining those attacks. After the nearly identical documents were posted, Democrats quickly flipped the Republican talking points back onto Trump.

Rep. Dave Min, a Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said the incident raises questions about Trump’s control of the White House, saying Republicans’ own logic suggests “we need to better understand who is actually in charge … because Trump seems to be slipping.”

Handwriting specialists say the initial pardons posted online showed signs of machine replication.

“One basic axiom of handwriting identification science is that no two signatures are going to bear the exact same design features in every aspect,” said Thomas Vastrick, a leading handwriting expert and president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners. “It’s very straightforward.”

Legal scholars stressed that even if an autopen were used, the validity of the pardons would not be affected.

The pardons themselves have also drawn attention. Casada, the former Tennessee House Speaker, was sentenced in September to three years in prison for a bribery scheme. Strawberry was pardoned for 1990s tax and drug convictions. McMahon was convicted earlier this year for participating in a “campaign of transnational repression.”

Trump has continued issuing clemency orders at a rapid pace. Last month he pardoned Changpeng Zhao — the billionaire former CEO of Binance — later admitting he had “no idea who he is” but was told Zhao was the victim of a “witch-hunt.” Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to enabling money laundering and served four months in prison.

And on Friday, Trump issued yet another pardon: Dan Wilson, a militia member who joined the January 6 Capitol riot and has ties to the extremist Oath Keepers and the Gray Ghost Partisan Rangers.

Republicans have so far defended Trump, even as they maintain that Biden’s autopen use constitutes a historic scandal. The House Oversight Committee — which declared that it “deems void all executive actions signed by the autopen” during Biden’s term — released a statement Friday asserting that Trump’s possible use of an electronic signature would be legitimate and fundamentally different from Biden’s.

Democrats argue that the committee’s position has now collapsed under the weight of its own rhetoric.

The Justice Department’s quiet revision of the pardon documents is unlikely to slow the broader political fight over clemency and presidential capacity, but it has handed Democrats a new opening in a debate Republicans had previously dominated.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)