Anyone: give me a benign explanation for this tweet from NBC News today…
Any takers?
The least damning explanations for this would be that whoever is running the NBC News X account is an idiot. But who hired him? Who trained him?
To state the obvious, the fact that the head of the Biden autopen investigation used an autopen is not newsworthy, ironic, or hypocritical. First, there is no evidence that Comer didn’t fully control the procedure. Second, he’s not President. Third, a subpoena does not confer a benefit on anyone. Fourth, there are no allegations of other serious usurpations of Comer’s power and position. Fifth, there is no indication that Comer is suffering from crippling dementia.
The tweet is an extraordinary example of really, really desperate whataboutism. It would be embarrassing f it came from a hyper-partisan junior House member. For such partisan spin to come from a major news organization is nauseating.
Ethics Alarms 
This is extremely pedantic, but a digital signature isn’t an autopen. “Autopen” was like “Kleenex” in that it’s both a brand and that brand is so prolific it is also used to generally describe the machine that the autopen is, which is a machine that you program a signature into and a real pen draws your signature on a piece of paper. A digital signature doesn’t exist on paper unless someone prints the entire document.
I don’t think under any other circumstances anyone would refer to a digital signature as an autopen, because 1) it’s not true and 2) autopen really hasn’t penetrated into language, basically everyone calls digital signatures E-sigs.
I don’t think they even gave themselves a fig leaf to hide behind.
Thanks, HT. Exactly. I’m going to assume these were digital messages, email, etc. Digital signatures are ubiquitous these days. Loan Applications, purchase and sale contracts, tax returns! They’re nothing like an autopen. There’s no paper involved!
And it’s interesting what you’re allowed to E-sign and what you aren’t. I constantly sign loan docs, contracts, SOWs, and purchase orders through an E-sig, but last year I had to drive 400 kilometers very quickly in an afternoon, because we missed a signature on a land transfer doc and the lawyers wouldn’t accept anything other than my scrawl on paper.
Well, I have to say that in 2002 I moved from Texas to North Carolina. I managed to sell my house in Texas from North Carolina entirely remotely. Not digitally, of course. I had to fax the papers there, but I never did set foot in Texas.
I would venture to say that it is likely that the majority of Americans have used a digital signature at some point.
If you’re buying a house and closing remotely. If you’re submitting a job application on the web. If you are filing a tax return electronically. If you’re applying for a credit card on the internet, signing legal documents on the internet. If you are agreeing to the interminable terms of service on the internet.
In all of those cases, you are using a digital signature of one form or another to make a legally binding agreement. It may not be called that exactly, and the forms differ but the effect is the same.
This is an mutation of TDS and the person who wrote this tweet is a)intellectually lazy, b)intellectually challenged, c)blinded by hatred or prejudice, or d)any combination of the above.
See? I didn’t call him or her an idiot now did I?
Ooops! Sorry DG, I jumped in too soon and stepped on your comment.
Mr Comer’s e-signature is clearly defined as an electronic signature. There’s no way to mistake it for the genuine article. The autopen can’t be distinguished from a handwritten signature (if Biden could still sign his own name at the time).