US President Trump: Since taking office, he has pardoned more than 1,600 criminals.Image: keystone
US President Trump accused his predecessor of using a signature machine. Trump apparently uses the device extensively himself.
November 16, 2025, 5:41 p.mNovember 16, 2025, 5:55 p.m
Martin Küper / t-online
The US Department of Justice has apparently released photos of pardon documents that have identical signatures from Donald Trump can be seen – and thus convict the president of double standards. Trump himself had his predecessor in office Joe Biden accused of using a signature machine to sign pardons and threatened to Not to recognize Biden’s decrees. Trump’s identical signatures show that he apparently uses the so-called “Autopen” himself, as the news agency “AP News” reports.
Accordingly, the Justice Department published photos of Trump’s pardons for several of his followers on its website last week. There was immediate speculation about the use of the “Autopen”. “AP News” presented the images to an expert in handwriting analysis, who undoubtedly recognized Trump’s signatures as identical. This is a clear indication that a machine was used, as handwritten signatures are never the same.
US Justice Department downplays mistakes
For Trump himself, the alleged scandal surrounding Biden’s use of the “Autopen” was so important that he had a photo of the device hung in Joe Biden’s place in the White House corridor with the portraits of former presidents. to mock Biden. This makes the US government’s mistake seem all the more embarrassing. The images with Trump’s identical signatures soon disappeared from the Justice Department’s website and were replaced a few hours later by images with the president’s individual signatures. The original photos can only be found in internet archives, according to AP News.
The Justice Department is now trying to downplay the embarrassing mistake. “There is no story here other than that President Trump hand-signed seven pardons and the Justice Department posted the seven documents with seven individual signatures on its website,” department spokesman Chad Gilmartin told the news agency. The original images were replaced due to a “technical error,” said Gilmartin.
Since taking office again in January, Trump has pardoned more than 1,600 people. Among those pardoned are many of the president’s loyal followers, such as George Santos. The Republican was sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud in April and was released in October after a pardon from Trump. Most of those pardoned by Trump are convicted criminals who took part in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. They received their pardons on the day Trump took office on January 20th.
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