I’ll explain the controversy over signatures on nine pardons, show the key witness account, reproduce the original Associated Press excerpt in full, walk through why critics rushed to judgment, and note how partisan reactions shaped the story without resolving the underlying questions.
On Friday, an Associated Press article questioned whether President Trump used an autopen to sign nine pardon documents, aiming to highlight a perceived hypocrisy after attacks on Joe Biden’s autopen use. The AP piece said several signatures were quickly “corrected,” implying a problem with the Justice Department’s initial uploads. That framing set off a predictable social media and media backlash that assumed the worst about the White House. The question at the center is straightforward: were those signatures mechanically reproduced or actually witnessed?
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.
That quoted passage became the basis for a lot of online certainty, but the rush to condemn overlooked a simple and testable fact: witnesses. Will Schaff, Assistant to the President and White House Staff Secretary, stepped forward and said he personally witnessed eight of the nine pardons being signed, with a team member witnessing the ninth. When an eyewitness account contradicts instant speculation, the proper response is to examine both claims, not to treat one side as guilty until proven innocent.
Social media amplified the AP framing, and many commentators ran with the autopen narrative before a single impartial check of the witnesses or the document-handling process. That pattern follows a familiar script: an accusation appears, it goes viral, and correction or context arrives hours later after the damage is done. The Justice Department did replace the files and called the matter a “technical error,” but corrections alone don’t settle whether a mechanical device was used or clerical workflow caused duplicate scans to be posted.
Partisan instincts matter here. If this had happened in the prior administration, many of the same outlets and commentators would have accepted an explanation from staff without the same level of outrage. Conservatives point out that the left often applies a double standard when it comes to procedural anomalies: when allies are involved, missteps are minimized; when opponents are involved, they are weaponized. That dynamic explains a lot of the heat around this minor procedural hiccup.
There’s also a human factor worth remembering: President Trump’s signature is distinctive and consistent. Before politics he was a public figure who signed countless autographs and documents for decades, so a high degree of uniformity in his handwriting is not surprising. Consistency does not prove mechanical reproduction, and familiarity with one’s own signature can produce near-identical results on multiple documents signed in rapid succession.
Critics have pointed to forensic document experts who said identical images appeared on the initial uploads, which is a legitimate technical observation. But image duplication on a website can result from scanning, file-naming errors, or copying the wrong image into a template, none of which change the legal validity of the pardons if the underlying originals were properly signed. Technical mistakes happen more often than people admit, and they do not automatically imply malfeasance.
People lining up to condemn the White House on this point ignored a simple truth: testimony from someone in the room matters. Mr. Schaff’s statement that he witnessed the signings is not proof of innocence in itself, but it moves the conversation from idle accusation toward verifiable fact-finding. The sensible next step would be a review of original hard-copy documents and the chain of custody for the files posted online, not a sustained campaign of indignation based on screenshots.
Meanwhile, the media’s appetite for the autopen narrative fed a larger story about selective outrage and journalistic priorities. Whether the error was clerical, technical, or something else, the response should have been measured: confirm facts, examine originals, and then report. Instead, the tale became another example of spin meeting social media, with conclusions laid down before evidence was checked.
At bottom, this episode in the ongoing culture war is small but revealing. It shows how quickly a technical glitch can become a political morality play, how witnesses can be dismissed in favor of viral impressions, and how predictable narratives shape who gets believed. The signatures on those pardons deserve scrutiny, but that scrutiny should be fair, factual, and free of partisan reflex.
On Sunday, Will Schaff, Assistant to the President and White House Staff Secretary, took to his personal X account to .
Add comment