President Donald Trump spent months attacking his predecessor’s use of automated signature technology on official documents. Then in November 2025, his own administration faced an awkward problem: three presidential pardons appeared on the Justice Department website with Trump’s signature looking pixel-perfect identical.
The documents vanished within hours, replaced with new versions showing different signatures. The White House called it a technical error. Forensic experts called it impossible for genuine handwriting.
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Forensic Experts Confirm Signatures Were Identical
Tom Vastrick, president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, examined the original pardon documents after online observers flagged them in mid-November. His conclusion was straightforward.
“A basic axiom of handwriting identification science is that no two signatures are going to bear the exact same design features in every aspect,” Vastrick told the Associated Press. He compared the original images, preserved through the Internet Archive, against the replacement documents.
A second forensic expert independently confirmed the findings. The signatures on pardons for former baseball star Darryl Strawberry, ex-Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, and former NYPD sergeant Michael McMahon were identical down to every curve and pen stroke.
Natural handwriting doesn’t work that way. Every time someone signs their name, tiny variations appear in pressure, angle, speed, and form.
How the Justice Department Responded
Chad Gilmartin, speaking for the Justice Department, blamed “staffing issues caused by the Democrat shutdown” for the problem. According to his statement, “one of the signatures President Trump personally signed was mistakenly uploaded multiple times.”
The explanation left key questions unanswered: How does a staffing shortage lead to identical signature images appearing on three separate pardon documents? Which signature was the original? Did staff use scanning technology or another method to duplicate it?
The Justice Department declined to provide additional details about the upload process or the technical error that produced identical signatures.
All three pardons dated November 7, 2025 disappeared from the official website sometime between November 14 and 15. New versions appeared with non-identical signatures. The pardons themselves remain legally valid regardless of signature method.
The Three Pardons at the Center
Strawberry, who won four World Series championships during his baseball career, pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 1995. He served 11 months in prison and paid $350,000 in restitution. The White House cited his Christian ministry work and decade of sobriety.
Casada was convicted on 17 federal counts in May 2024, including wire fraud and money laundering. He and his chief of staff created a shell company called Phoenix Solutions to funnel state legislative printing contracts to themselves. The scheme netted less than $5,000 but landed him a 36-month sentence in September 2025 from a Trump-appointed federal judge.
McMahon received 18 months in spring 2025 for acting as a foreign agent for China. Federal prosecutors said he participated in “transnational repression,” attempting to intimidate a former Chinese official into returning home. His attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, told reporters he learned about the signature replacement only when contacted by the Associated Press.
Trump’s Campaign Against Biden’s Autopen Use
The signature incident landed during Trump’s sustained attacks on Biden’s use of autopen technology for presidential documents.
In March 2025, Trump declared Biden’s pardons of January 6 committee members “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.” His claim rested on the allegation that Biden used autopen technology and “did not know anything about them.”
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee released a 93-page report in October 2025 demanding a Justice Department investigation into what Chairman James Comer called “The Biden Autopen Presidency.” Attorney General Pam Bondi announced her office had begun reviewing the matter.
By December 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social attempting to “terminate” all Biden executive actions signed by autopen, calling them “null, void, and of no further force or effect.”
Biden defended his practices in multiple interviews. He told The New York Times in July 2025 that he personally approved every pardon and commutation before staff used autopen technology because of the volume involved. “We’re talking about a whole lot of people,” Biden said. He called claims that he didn’t know what he was signing “ridiculous and false.”
What Constitutional Scholars Actually Say
Legal experts across the political spectrum agree on the fundamentals, even as political figures argue otherwise.
The Constitution gives presidents broad clemency powers under Article II, Section 2. It says nothing about signature requirements. Jay Wexler, a constitutional law professor at Boston University, told NPR the entire autopen controversy is a “nonstarter” because “there’s no requirement that the pardon even be signed.”
A 2005 Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memo confirmed presidents can direct subordinates to sign documents on their behalf, including through autopen technology. Presidents Lincoln, Kennedy, and Obama all used mechanical signatures or delegation for official documents.
Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law professor writing a book on presidential pardons, said the key legal test is presidential intent. “The key to pardon validity is whether the president intended to grant the pardon,” Bowman explained.
Once delivered, pardons are final. An 1869 judicial ruling established this principle, and no subsequent president has successfully revoked a predecessor’s pardon.
The Questions That Remain
Three months after the signature incident, the Justice Department still hasn’t explained the specific technical process that led to identical signatures appearing on three separate pardon documents dated the same day.
The White House hasn’t clarified whether Trump personally signed all three pardons with a pen, whether staff scanned one signature for multiple documents, or whether the administration used electronic signature technology.
Republicans continue investigating Biden’s autopen practices while Trump’s own administration faced scrutiny over signature methods. In October 2025, just weeks before the identical signature discovery, Trump pardoned crypto billionaire Changpeng Zhao and later told CBS News “I don’t know who he is” and “I have no idea who he is,” raising separate questions about pardon oversight.
The Justice Department maintained the signature issue was simply a technical upload error with no bearing on the pardons’ validity. The forensic experts who examined the documents offered no opinion on how or why the identical signatures appeared, only confirming that genuine handwriting couldn’t produce such results.
Trump has issued more than 1,700 pardons and commutations across both terms, including approximately 1,500 people involved in the January 6 Capitol attack. The identical signature incident affected three of those pardons. All three recipients remain free under valid presidential clemency.
