Trump accused of using autopen for latest pardons despite mocking Biden for doing it
Donald Trump has accused former President Joe Biden of using autopen to a great extent, even calling for the pardons made with autopen to be voided. However, two experts in the field now claim that Donald himself used an autopen for the latest batch of pardons, which prompted the Justice Department to act.
That Donald Trump doesn’t like former Pårsident Joe Biden is not news. The president bashed his predecessor for being too old and having all sorts of illnesses, and one of the main things he’s gone after with Biden is the autopen.
Donald Trump has been very outspoken about Biden’s ute os autpen, even wanting to void all pardons he claims Biden performed but used the machine to sign them. In fact, when Donald presented his “Presidential Walk of Fame” at the White House, he replaced a portrait of Biden with an autopen.
It has even become a question for Republicans in Congress, with them urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to conduct 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.”
However, using the autopen is not exclusive to Biden. Presidents before him have used it – and Donald Trump too. On November 7, he signed new pardons.
Forensic document experts claims Donald Trump used autopen for November 7 pardons
But it appears he, just as he accused Biden of doing, could have used autopens for his pardons granted to former New York Mets player Darryl Strawberry, former Tennessee House speaker Glen Casada, and former New York police sergeant Michael McMahon, among others.
Per The Guardian, the signatures on several of the pardons initially uploaded to the Justice Department’s website were identical, two forensic document experts told The Associated Press. Not long after the news was out, the Justice Department quietly corrected the pardons, which bore identical copies of Donald Trump’s signature.
The agency called it a “technical error.” Chad Gilmartin, a Justice Department spokesperson, told the Associated Press, “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”.
White House spokesperson says it’s a “non-story”
“There is no story here other than the fact that President Trump signed seven pardons by hand and [the Department of Justice] posted those same seven pardons with seven unique signatures to our website,” Gilmartin added
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 autopenned pardons, not covering a non-story,” she wrote.
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