This week, questions were raised regarding the legitimacy of signatures on recent clemency orders signed by Donald Trump. This criticism grew even louder after an avalanche of criticism directed at Joe Biden for signing his pardons with an autopen. Luckily, political tension has not risen dramatically—until now. Republicans in Congress are painting Biden’s whole approach as a gigantic scandal and calling into question his mental faculties over the course of his entire presidency.
The Justice Department’s new online postings even substitute new versions of their original text featuring seven clemency orders with eery, matching signatures. This amendment has led to unprecedented scrutiny of Trump’s pardons. This recent action has led to cries for investigations. That’s why so many people are asking whether Trump used an autopen, a device that reproduces signatures, to sign those documents.
On November 7, Donald Trump pardoned a bunch of people. Among them were former New York Yankees outfielder Darryl Strawberry and then-state House Speaker Glen Casada, who had recently been found guilty of corruption. If Trump pushes through such a controversial pardon for Changpeng Zhao. Zhao, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, had earlier today entered guilty pleas on multiple counts of money laundering. Immediately after the pardon, Trump did an exclusive interview with CBS News. He denied having any knowledge of Zhao beforehand and defended Zhao as a victim of political persecution by the Biden administration.
Chad Gilmartin, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, attempted to vouch for the integrity of Trump’s pardons. He claimed that the department did edit the uploaded signatures as required. Pretending it was all just a misunderstanding, he claimed there’s no deeper story at play. Trump only personally signed seven pardons during his presidency, and the Department of Justice graciously uploaded those seven unique pardons—complete with Trump’s unique squiggle signature—to our website.
Even with this assurance, suspicion lingers over the authenticity of Trump’s signatures, especially given that they look eerily alike. Yet Thomas Vastrick, a handwriting expert from Florida, testified that variations in signatures are the rule, not the exception. He foreshadowed a crucial tenet of the science of handwriting identification: no two signatures are ever going to be exactly the same down to the specific design elements. That leaves pretty serious doubt as to whether all seven pardons really are examples of Trump’s intent to bestow clemency.
The discussion around Biden’s autopen use has been more than a little overhyped. Cue Republicans, who are interpreting this as further evidence of Biden’s rumored mental deterioration. They denounce its application as the greatest scandal in U.S. history. Abigail Jackson, a Republican spokesperson, went even further. She challenged reporters to investigate Joe Biden’s more than 900 autopenned pardons rather than report on this non-story.
Trump’s anticipated use of an electronic signature has brought out Democrats’ calls for accountability. California Congressman Dave Min voiced concerns over leadership in the White House, stating, “we need to better understand who is actually in charge of the White House because Trump seems to be slipping.”
Against these assertions, legal scholar Frank Bowman noted that at the heart of a pardon’s validity is the president’s intent. The standard to determine the validity of a pardon is all about the president’s intent to provide the pardon,” he said. He noted that any re-signing of documents could be perceived as an “obvious, and rather silly, effort to avoid comparison to Biden.”
Since oversight committee Republicans first sounded the alarm over this new, dangerous control over the autopen, this issue has gained national attention. They noted that “senior White House officials did not know who operated the autopen and its use was not sufficiently controlled or documented to prevent abuse. So it is this lack of oversight that has catalyzed additional investigations into the bona fides of both Biden’s and Trump’s pardons.
The controversy surrounding Trump’s recent clemency orders continues to unfold as more details emerge about both his signature practices and Biden’s use of the autopen. Yet these two administrations embody immensely different approaches to issuing pardons. Beyond the negative impact on a particular victim, this contrast raises larger questions about accountability and transparency in government operations.