Seemingly identical signatures appeared on clemency orders, which White House blamed on technical error
The Trump administration’s clemency drive is coming under scrutiny after the justice department this week replaced pardons posted online that bore strikingly similar copies of Trump’s signature with others that are distinctively variable.
The corrections came after online commenters seized on the similarities in the president’s signature granting “full and unconditional” pardons to seven men, including to former New York Mets player Darryl Strawberry, former Tennessee House speaker Glen Casada and former New York police sergeant Michael McMahon, on 7 November.
Administration officials have blamed “technical” errors and staffing issues for the apparent oversight and insisted to the Associated Press that Trump had originally signed all the pardons himself.
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”.
