Justice Department quietly replaced 'identical' Trump signatures on recent pardons

https://apnews.com/article/trump-pardon-biden-justice-department-ed-martin-d525b1911534a40f70394fddf396acc1

Justice Department quietly replaced ‘identical’ Trump signatures on recent pardons
By JIM MUSTIAN, BRIAN SLODYSKO and MATT BROWN
Updated 7:51 PM CST, November 14, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department posted pardons online bearing identical copies of President Donald Trump’s signature before quietly correcting them this week after what the agency called a “technical error.”

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, 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.

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’s use of an autopen, had originally signed all the Nov. 7 pardons himself and blamed “technical” and staffing issues for the error, which has no bearing on the validity of the clemency actions.

The questions about Trump’s 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 “a Biden witch hunt.”

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