On Tuesday morning, conservatives on X were set ablaze with a lunkheaded work of potbellied partisanship by NBCNews.com that insisted a scandal of rank hypocrisy was afoot: “Lead investigator into Biden's use of an autopen signed letters with a digital signature.” The man in question? House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) using Adobe Sign (or a similar software) to sign letters.
NBC correspondents Ryan Nobles and Melanie Zanona almost certainly took this story right from the hands of Biden flacks or some other liberal operative and published a lame, nearly-1,1
00-word story when they intentionally missed the point of Comer’s investigation, which is whether former President Biden actually knew what was being signed by staff in his name.
Nobles went on MSNBC in the 1:00 p.m. Eastern hour to trumpet this supposed bombshell:
He also went on NBC’s free streaming channel NBC News NOW shortly after the article went live.
Speaking of the piece, try and not laugh at the absurdity of how serious they sound (click “expand”):
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., has been leading the probe into Joe Biden’s cognitive state during his presidency, with Republicans alleging that Biden's occasional use of an “autopen” to sign documents — a practice other presidents have done as well — demonstrated that he wasn’t fully in control or aware of what his administration was doing.
But documents show that some of the letters and subpoena notices Comer has sent out in connection to his investigation have been signed using a digital signature — not written by the congressman himself.
(....)
Comer’s committee has taken up Trump’s push in Congress. He has sent 16 letters to former Biden White House officials requesting transcribed interviews. In all 16 of those letters, metadata reveals his signature was a digital picture inserted into the letter.
In addition to the 16 letters requesting voluntary appearances, Comer sent letters to former White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Conner and Anthony Bernal, who served as a senior aide to then-first lady Jill Biden, forcing them to appear via subpoena. The cover letters for the subpoenas were both signed with digital images, rather than Comer writing out his name by hand — what’s known as a “wet signature.”
But, wait, there was more: “While the committee released copies of the letters, it released only a photo of the actual subpoena, which does appear to show a wet signature from Comer. A look at the metadata of the letters shows that they were created by someone besides Comer. And hovering over Comer’s signature in Adobe Acrobat shows that it is a digital image.”
The indefatigable RedSteeze on X tweeted about this absurd passage: “So just to get this straight, instead of investigating the president United States possibly not knowing who he's pardoning, you guys are investigating a PDF and Adobe Acrobat?”
At least they ran huge chunks of a statement from a Oversight Committee spokeswoman fact-checking them on the difference between “digital signatures for official correspondence” being “a common practice for both Republicans and Democrats” while the issue with Biden is whether there was “unauthorized use of an autopen in the Biden White House for legally binding executive actions.”
Nobles and Zanona went onto explain the common practice of designated staff using “digital copies of signatures” of their boss to help move correspondences along, but went back to making this a problem with help from former longtime House GOP aide Brendan Buck calling this “not...sustainable[.]”
The two took Biden at his word that he was in full command of what his staff was using his signature to sign, but closed by pivoting back to Comer as some sort of raging hypocrite (click “expand”):
There is precedent for sending letters with digital signatures like the ones Comer is sending. Most of the ones sent to investigatory targets in the Jan. 6 Select Committee investigation were signed digitally, and committee staff argue the chairman is adhering to a long-held congressional standard.
But Democrats argue that the same standard exists in the White House, and Comer picking and choosing when he physically signs something is arbitrary at best and hypocritical at worst.
(....)
House Oversight Republicans are attempting to prove that the use of the autopen was directly connected to Biden's not being aware that something was being signed on his behalf. At this point, the committee has not specifically said what, if any, documents would fall in that category, and they still have yet to reveal evidence that would back up their theory.
A source with direct knowledge of the committee’s work told NBC News that the focus of their witness interviews has been to understand the process by which presidential decisions were made and communicated to officials who affixed Biden’s signature to official documents. It is the committee’s belief that affixing the president’s signature to a legally binding document without providing him with the necessary background information is inappropriate.
Feel free to disagree, but using DocuSign like one would for signing mortgage documents is not the same as the feeble-minded President not knowing where he is. Moreover, NBC should be embarrassed for seemingly discovering that every legally biding court filing is also signed this way.
In fact, our friend Matthew Foldi at the Washington Reporter noted parent company NBCUniversal’s most recent Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings were signed by....DocuSign:
Imagine having such little substantive work experience that you successfully pitched your bosses on writing a story scandalizing digital signatures.
Former NewsBusters intern Alec Sears also had some fun mocking NBC:
Over at the White House, Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson tore the peacock network a new one: “The issue is that Biden’s staff was making decisions via autopen while his brain was mashed potatoes. The press MUST realize this (or they’re dumber than I thought) so I’m not sure what the heck this is supposed to be.”
At the end of the day, they certainly know the difference, but have chosen to care more about helping fellow Democrats than they do about preserving the institution of journalism that they claim to care so much about.
JustTheNews’s Jerry Dunleavy said this as well, going after MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Jonathan Lemire:
