“A basic axiom of handwriting identification science is that no two signatures are going to bear the exact same design features in every aspect,” said Tom Vastrick, a Florida-based handwriting expert who is president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners.

“It’s very straightforward,” said Vastrick, who compared the apparently identical images, now only visible through the online Internet Archive, with the replacements at AP’s request.

Chad Gilmartin, a Justice Department spokesperson, said the “website was updated after a technical error where one of the signatures President Trump personally signed was mistakenly uploaded multiple times due to staffing issues caused by the Democrat shutdown.”

“There is no story here other than the fact that President Trump signed seven pardons by hand and DOJ posted those same seven pardons with seven unique signatures to our website,” Gilmartin said in a statement to AP, referring to the latest wave of clemency Trump has granted in recent weeks.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson wrote in an email that Trump “signed each one of these pardons by hand as he does with all pardons.”

“The media should spend their time investigating Joe Biden’s countless auto penned pardons, not covering a non-story,” she wrote.

Trump has been an outspoken critic of Biden’s use of the autopen to conduct executive business, going as far as to display a picture of one such device in place of a portrait of his predecessor in a new “Presidential Walk of Fame” he created along the West Wing colonnade. His Republican allies in Congress last month released a blistering critique of Biden’s alleged “diminished faculties” and mental state during his term that ranked the Democrat’s use of the autopen among “the greatest scandals in U.S. history.”

The Republicans said their findings cast doubt on all of Biden’s actions in office and sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging a full investigation.

“Senior White House officials did not know who operated the autopen and its use was not sufficiently controlled or documented to prevent abuse,” the House Oversight Committee found. “The Committee deems void all executive actions signed by the autopen without proper, corresponding, contemporaneous, written approval traceable to the president’s own consent.”

On Friday, Republicans who control the committee released a statement that characterized Trump’s potential use of an electronic signature as legitimate, which it distinguished from Biden’s.

But Rep. Dave Min, a California Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, seized on the apparent similarities in the initial version of the pardons and called for an investigation of the matter, deploying the Republican arguments against Biden in a statement to AP that “we need to better understand who is actually in charge of the White House, because Trump seems to be slipping.”

Regardless, legal experts say the use of an autopen has no bearing on the validity of the pardons.

“The key to pardon validity is whether the president intended to grant the pardon,” said Frank Bowman, a legal historian and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law who is writing a book on pardons. “Any re-signing is an obvious, and rather silly, effort to avoid comparison to Biden.”

Much of Trump’s mercy has gone to political allies, campaign donors and fraudsters who claimed they were victims of a “weaponized” Justice Department. Trump has largely cast aside a process that historically has been overseen by nonpolitical personnel at the Justice Department.

Casada, a disgraced former Republican speaker of the Tennessee House, was sentenced in September to three years in prison. He was convicted of working with a former legislative aide to win taxpayer-funded mail business from state lawmakers who previously drove Casada from office amid a sexting scandal.

Strawberry was convicted in the 1990s of tax evasion and drug charges. Trump cited the 1983 National League Rookie of the Year’s post-career embrace of his Christian faith and longtime sobriety when pardoning him.

McMahon, a former New York City police sergeant, was sentenced this spring to 18 months in prison for his role in what a federal judge called “a campaign of transnational repression.” He was convicted of acting as a foreign agent for China after he tried to scare an ex-official into going back to his homeland.

McMahon’s defense attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, said he was not aware the pardon documents had been replaced until he was contacted Friday by an AP reporter.

“It is and has always been our understanding that President Trump granted Mr. McMahon his pardon,” Lustberg wrote in an email.

>>1457919
There's legitimately more of a case for Trump's pardons to be invalid than Bidens. Biden at least never said outright he had no idea who someone he directly pardoned even was.

>>1457923
Trump is everything they claimed Biden was for four years.

>>1457922
>McMahon, a former New York City police sergeant, was sentenced this spring to 18 months in prison for his role in what a federal judge called “a campaign of transnational repression.” He was convicted of acting as a foreign agent for China after he tried to scare an ex-official into going back to his homeland.
One, why did he literally only get a year and a half for being a literal foreign asset.

Two, WHY DID TRUMP PARDON A LITERAL FOREIGN ASSET?

>>1457926
>Two, WHY DID TRUMP PARDON A LITERAL FOREIGN ASSET?
Corrupt cops have a strong lobbying arm.

>>1457926
He wasn't a foreign asset. He was asked to investigate an individual who he was told had embezzled funds from a construction company. He didn't know that a Chinese spy agency had hired him, and was very open with the police about who he was looking for.

This would be like the FBI arresting a pizza delivery guy for carrying food to Jeffrey Epstein's apartment. It's retarded.

>>1457938
Arguing you didn't know you were working for the Chinese government when you did know you were working for a Chinese construction company is fucking stupid.

Foreign agent laws also apply to situations where the party in question can reasonably infer they are dealing with a state agent even if it's not the literal government and those laws get enforced all the fucking time against people working with state run companies.

Also he was convicted of stalking even if you set aside the foreign agent bit.

>>1457938
>He didn't know that a Chinese spy agency had hired him

Trump's own DOJ disagrees with you

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/private-investigator-sentenced-prison-interstate-stalking-and-harassment-chinese-nationals

When you first joined MAGA, did you ever envision it would lead you down a path where you'd be lying to defend a CCP asset acting on American soil because Trump accidentally pardoned him using autopen?

>>1457938
Good post

>>1457944
I was going to comment it was a lie and not a good post, but then I realized the intention behind the post.
It did successfully derail the thread off the fact that President Bubba Blower is using autopen after having a squealing hissy fit about it for months, so I guess in that sense it's a good post.

>>1457942
>reasonably infer
NYC is filled to the brim with shell companies created by foreign richfags to anonymously launder money through the American real-estate market. That's why nobody can afford a home in NYC anymore. A huge percentage of American residential properties are owned by Chinese and/or Arab moguls.

That aside, what is he supposed to do? Leave NYC to avoid the riskof potentially dealing with one of the many chinese spies that Trump wants to let into the country? That's fucking stupid.

EVERY
ACCUSATION
IS
A
CONFESSION

repuglicans have no integrity or standards.

>>1457959
I mean, sure, if you dont at all understand what the autopen argument is about.
>spoiler: its not actually about using an autopen

>>1457961
Yeah it's actually about a president who didn't even know who he was pardoning.

...which, you know, is also Trump.

>>1457961
Correct. It's about distracting from Epstein, like all of the fake controversies he invents and makes Republicans go along with.
Remember when WSJ ran a story about the birthday later he gave Epstein (which turned out to be real), and like four hours later he accused Obama of literal treason? Then he made Tulsi put on that sad little press conference about it and never brought it up again?

>>1457963
>...which, you know, is also Trump.
There is nothing to suggest that he doesnt know what he is doing or that his team is concealing things from him. This was not the case with Biden.

>>1457964
Year 10 of you dudes cooking up wild conspiracy theories about how its literally over for Trump and that the walls are closing in.

>>1457967
Nah. The left finally figured out Trump does way more damage to the right when he's just allowed to be himself unimpeded. This year has been fantastic proof of that hypothesis.

>>1457966
>There is nothing to suggest that he doesnt know what he is doing or that his team is concealing things from him
You know, aside from him literally admitting he doesn't know who Changpeng Zhao even is beyond the fact he pardoned him. I wonder how many of this new wave of pardons that applies to as well?

>>1457925
Projection? From MAGA!? Unheard of!

>>1457946
Don't humor his samefaggotry

>>1457967
Do you think democrats or leftists made up the emails?

>>1457967
>Year 10 of you dudes cooking up wild conspiracy theories
There is not a single self-aware bone in your entire fucking body.

>>1457971
>You know, aside from him literally admitting he doesn't know who Changpeng Zhao even is beyond the fact he pardoned him.
In fairness, that was more probably as cover for the obvious bribe.

>>1457955
He could just register as a foreign agent. That's a thing you can do. Americans working for China is legal. They just have to be open about it.

>>1458004
Well right now I'll take him at his word and assume he just doesn't check who he pardons. His options are either admitting that or admitting to blatantly taking a bribe.

>>1458006
He was working for a company based in the US retard.

>>1458021
do you live in the US retard? is it duty free?

Herr Steven Müller et al hire a hooker who is a dead ringer for Trump's 18 yr old granddaughter, Kai. "Oh dear granddaddy, I'll let you lick my sweet pu*sy if you let us pardon ......" The senile pedo drools and left them pardon anyone

https://media.okmagazine.com/brand-img/0yDCYUai1/1280x670/donald-trump-granddaughter-kai-silver-dress-inauguration-ball-photos-1737477388058.jpg

>>1458030
He mistakes for a teen Ivanka

>>1457919
>Be me, AP
>Biden does this
>Sleep
>Trump does it
>Wowazzaaa!!?? Muh gRumpf!!!
AP spent 4 years advocating for senile brain cancer Jimmy Cartrer 2.0 who pardoned his family and associates 'of no crimes'.

Anyway, the Chinaman he pardon is Canadian.

>>1458021
>He was working for a company based in the US retard.
No. He wasn't.

>>1457925
Trump is Biden without the gaffes on…

>>1457946
When you see him type 'good post', that means it's not a good post. If you cannot into that, you do not belong here.

>>1458035
Where do you people get this shit from?