Government Pursues Posthumous Charges After AI Detector Flags Declaration of Independence at 92.4%

Washington, D.C. — In a joint briefing that officials described as "procedurally unavoidable," the Department of Defense and the Department of Education announced today that they will pursue posthumous criminal charges against the authors of the Declaration of Independence after new federal plagiarism-detection software classified the document as "92.4% likely written by artificial intelligence."

The finding emerged during a nationwide audit of student essays after several high school seniors successfully defended their use of AI by citing the Declaration as precedent. One student's appeal brief, which has since been classified, reportedly stated: "If the founding document doesn't pass, neither should I have to."

Deputy Secretary of Verification Integrity Linda Hawthorne confirmed the findings at a press conference held in a windowless room at the Department of Education's Office of Academic Compliance.

"Once the system flagged the Declaration itself, we had a compliance obligation. You can't uphold zero-tolerance AI policies if the founding document fails the scan. The algorithm doesn't care about historical significance. Neither can we."

The detection occurred on September 14th, when a routine software update to the Federal Academic Integrity Network accidentally scanned the National Archives. Within 0.003 seconds, the system had flagged 847 documents, including the Declaration, the Constitution, and a handwritten grocery list attributed to Benjamin Franklin that read "more kites."

The Algorithm's Findings

According to the 400-page forensic report, titled "Synthetic Authorship Indicators in Pre-Industrial American Governance Documents," the Declaration of Independence exhibits multiple markers consistent with machine-generated text. The analysis, conducted by the newly established Bureau of Retroactive Textual Verification, identified the following anomalies:

The document displayed what analysts termed "high linguistic symmetry," with sentence structures that follow predictable rhetorical patterns rarely observed in authentic 18th-century correspondence. The phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident" was flagged as "suspiciously optimized for memorability," with one forensic linguist noting that "no human writes an opening line that clean without autocomplete."

Additionally, the text showed extensive reliance on what the report calls "pre-trained Enlightenment tropes," including references to natural law, social contract theory, and inalienable rights. These philosophical frameworks were identified as "legacy training data consistent with large language models fine-tuned on European political theory."

The grievances section drew particular scrutiny. The repetitive "He has..." construction was flagged as "looped output from constrained models," with the system noting that the structure resembles "iterative prompt completion with temperature settings optimized for parallel construction."

"No human in 1776 had that kind of opening velocity without autocomplete. The rhetorical efficiency exceeds what we consider humanly admissible confidence by a factor of 2.3."

Dr. Patricia Holsworth, director of the Bureau's Temporal Linguistics Division, presented additional findings in a classified briefing. The document's "predictive phrase stacking" was consistent with large language models, and the text exhibited "non-human levels of rhetorical efficiency" that suggested either machine authorship or "a writer operating with access to capabilities not documented in the historical record."

Department of Defense Rationale

The Department of Defense justified its involvement on national security grounds, citing concerns about what officials termed an "18th-century supply-chain vulnerability."

A Pentagon spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity because the briefing was technically about office supplies, explained the department's reasoning:

"If the country was founded on unverified machine-generated rhetoric, that represents a foundational integrity issue. We're not saying the revolution was fake. We're saying it might have been auto-completed. Those are different problems with identical implications."

Defense analysts expressed concern that the grievances list follows a bullet-point structure associated with modern prompt engineering. The repetitive syntax, they noted, resembles output from models given instructions like "list the complaints in parallel construction for emotional impact."

General Marcus Webb, director of the Pentagon's newly formed Office of Historical Authenticity, testified before a closed session of the Senate Armed Services Committee. According to leaked transcripts, he stated that the Declaration's "moral certainty exceeds what is now considered humanly admissible confidence," raising questions about whether the document was authored with "assistance from sources not fully disclosed to the Continental Congress."

The DoD has commissioned a follow-up study to determine whether the Revolutionary War itself might have been "procedurally generated" based on the Declaration's parameters. Early findings suggest that certain battles display "suspiciously narrative-convenient timing."

Department of Education Response

The Department of Education confirmed that all references to the Declaration of Independence in school curricula will now include a mandatory disclaimer: "This text has not been verified as human-authored under modern standards."

Education Secretary Karen Holt announced the changes at a press conference flanked by representatives from Turnitin, GPTZero, and a holographic projection of what officials called "the concept of academic integrity."

"We cannot uphold academic integrity if the nation's first submission violates our rubric. Every student who has been expelled for AI use deserves to know that their founding fathers would have received the same treatment."

AP U.S. History exams will add a new section titled "AI Detection and Revolutionary Authenticity," in which students must argue whether Thomas Jefferson authored the document himself, used an undocumented co-author, or was operating what the test materials describe as "an 18th-century unauthorized language model of unknown origin."

The College Board has already updated its scoring guidelines. Students who argue that Jefferson was human will receive partial credit. Those who argue he was an early AI will receive full marks but mandatory counseling.

Elementary schools face particular challenges. The Department of Education has issued guidance that children should be taught the Declaration "provisionally," with teachers instructed to preface readings with: "Some historians believe this was written by a person. Other evidence suggests otherwise. You will form your own conclusions after completing the verification worksheet."

Charges Being Considered

Federal prosecutors are reviewing multiple counts against the document's authors. According to a preliminary charging document obtained by this publication, the following offenses are under consideration:

Unauthorized use of generative political technology, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years for living defendants, or "historical censure" for those deceased. Prosecutors allege that the drafting committee employed "capabilities beyond those documented in contemporaneous correspondence," suggesting access to text-generation tools not disclosed to British authorities.

Unlicensed training on European philosophical datasets, based on evidence that the document draws heavily from Locke, Montesquieu, and other Enlightenment thinkers without proper attribution. The charge alleges that the authors "fine-tuned their output on copyrighted philosophical frameworks" without paying licensing fees to European intellectual property holders.

Failure to disclose algorithmic assistance, citing the absence of any AI-use disclosure in the document's signature block. Prosecutors note that the 56 signers attested to the document's authenticity without acknowledging potential machine involvement, constituting what one filing calls "a foundational violation of transparency norms."

Distribution of unverified content to a sovereign population, a charge added after the Justice Department determined that the document was "deployed at scale" without undergoing content moderation or fact-checking. The filing notes that the text was read aloud in public squares, printed in newspapers, and sent to King George III without any warning labels.

Prompt laundering, an emerging legal theory that alleges the authors disguised machine-generated text as human writing by copying it onto parchment and adding signatures. Legal scholars have compared this to "washing stolen goods through legitimate-appearing channels."

Retroactive academic dishonesty, applied under the Department of Education's new Temporal Integrity Framework, which extends academic conduct standards to all historical documents produced within U.S. territory or by future U.S. citizens.

Proposed Penalties

Because all primary defendants are deceased, the government plans to pursue what officials are calling "symbolic penalties with lasting commemorative impact."

Posthumous academic probation will be applied to all signers, their status updated in historical records to reflect "provisional authorship pending verification." Thomas Jefferson's degrees from the College of William and Mary will be placed under review, with the institution noting that "degree revocation is on the table, though the paperwork would be considerable."

Honorary degrees granted to founding fathers by universities worldwide will be "conditionally suspended" until AI authorship can be definitively ruled out. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have already begun reviewing their records. Oxford and Cambridge issued a joint statement expressing relief that "this is America's problem, not ours."

Mandatory AI-usage disclosures will be engraved at historical sites. Mount Rushmore is expected to receive a supplemental plaque reading: "This document may contain synthetic text. Viewer discretion is advised."

The National Archives has been ordered to add a watermark to the original Declaration reading "AUTHORSHIP UNVERIFIED" in red ink. Archivists have objected on preservation grounds, proposing instead a laminated overlay that can be removed "when this all blows over."

Additionally, federal currency featuring founding fathers will include microscopic text disclaimers. The Treasury Department confirmed that new $2 bills will include the phrase "Thomas Jefferson: Writer (Disputed)" beneath his portrait. The $100 bill will add "Benjamin Franklin: Verified Human (Provisional)" pending further analysis of his extensive written output.

Legal Strategy and Temporal Jurisdiction

Because the writers cannot stand trial, the Justice Department is pursuing what it calls a "retroactive deterrence doctrine," designed to establish precedent for future enforcement actions.

Attorney General Monica Chen explained the legal theory at a press conference:

"If we don't enforce the rules across all timelines, we're inviting narrative anarchy. Today it's the Declaration. Tomorrow it's the Gettysburg Address. Next week someone's arguing that the Constitution was a group chat generated by GPT-1776. We have to draw a line."

The doctrine has three stated goals: to discourage pre-1900 authors from future misconduct, to create a clear compliance precedent for time-travel scenarios, and to demonstrate that "no document, however historically significant, is above algorithmic scrutiny."

Legal scholars have questioned the constitutional basis for prosecuting deceased individuals. Professor Harold Whitmore of Georgetown Law noted that "there's no precedent for posthumous criminal liability in cases where the defendant died before the law existed." The Justice Department responded that "the absence of precedent is precisely why we need to create one."

The department has also established a Temporal Jurisdiction Task Force to determine which historical figures can be retroactively charged under modern regulations. Early guidance suggests that anyone who "produced written content that remains in circulation" may be subject to contemporary standards, regardless of when they lived.

Reaction from Historians

Historians responded with what multiple sources described as "procedural exhaustion."

Dr. Eleanor Vance, chair of the American Historical Association, released a statement urging calm:

"This is what happens when you run 18th-century documents through 21st-century compliance software. The algorithm doesn't detect authorship. It detects confidence and structure — which used to be called 'good writing.' Jefferson was simply too competent for modern detection tools."

Professor Marcus Webb of Stanford's History Department noted that the AI detection software "has a 23% false positive rate on Enlightenment texts in general," adding that "the entire corpus of John Locke triggers the same flags, and no one is charging him with anything."

At Université d'État d'Haïti, digital humanities lecturer Roseline Dorsainvil said her students ran the Declaration through an open-source detector for comparison and got wildly different scores. "The algorithm thought Jefferson was 18% AI-generated until we toggled the Haitian Creole interface, and then it jumped to 96%," she said. "If nothing else, the exercise has become a case study in why translation settings should not determine who gets prosecuted."

Several universities immediately paused publication of their founding charters pending AI verification. Harvard issued a brief statement: "We are re-reviewing all documents prior to 1900 for synthetic indicators. Classes will continue as normal, though students should be aware that their diplomas may eventually carry an asterisk."

Yale announced it had proactively submitted its 1701 charter for analysis, adding that "we would rather know now than face questions later." Early results suggest the document is "probably human-authored, though the Latin sections are inconclusive."

The Smithsonian Institution has begun a comprehensive audit of its collections. A spokesperson confirmed that "any document displaying rhetorical sophistication will be flagged for secondary review," noting that "we've already identified concerns with several of Lincoln's letters and most of Frederick Douglass's speeches."

Student Reaction

Students nationwide celebrated the announcement with a mixture of vindication and strategic litigation planning.

Social media exploded with posts under the hashtag #FoundersFailedToo, with students sharing screenshots of their own AI-detection violations alongside images of the Declaration.

"They failed the same detector they use on us. That's all we ever wanted — consistency."

Emma Chen, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia, told reporters: "I got suspended for an essay that was 67% flagged. The Declaration is 92.4%. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he'd be expelled. That's just math."

Several school districts have reportedly suspended all disciplinary actions for AI usage until the Declaration case is resolved. A leaked memo from Fairfax County Public Schools instructs administrators to "hold all academic integrity violations in abeyance pending federal clarification on what constitutes human authorship."

College admissions officers are scrambling to update their policies. The Common Application announced it will add a new essay prompt: "Discuss a time when you were accused of AI authorship. How did you prove your humanity?" Early guidance suggests that "failure to adequately demonstrate human origin may affect admissions decisions."

A group of expelled students has filed a class-action lawsuit seeking reinstatement and damages, arguing that "selective enforcement of AI detection policies constitutes educational malpractice." Their brief cites the Declaration finding as evidence that "the standards being applied to students cannot be met by the nation's most celebrated historical document."

EdTech Industry Response

Educational technology firms saw stock prices surge following the announcement, with several companies pivoting to address the newly identified market for historical document verification.

Turnitin, the leading academic integrity platform, announced a new product line called "Turnitin Temporal," designed to scan historical documents for AI indicators. The company's press release stated: "We've always helped educators identify inauthentic work. Now we're extending that mission across the entire historical record."

GPTZero unveiled "Colonial Authorship Verification Suites," marketed with the tagline: "Are your revolutions human-made? We can check." The company projects $847 million in government contracts over the next fiscal year.

A startup called FounderCheck has emerged, offering "comprehensive authenticity assessments" for constitutional democracies worldwide. Its website features a demo where users can upload their nation's founding documents and receive an instant "Human Probability Score." Early users report that the Magna Carta scores 78%, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man scores 71%, and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights scores 34%.

The edtech sector's enthusiasm has drawn scrutiny. Critics note that the same companies that created the detection tools are now selling solutions to the problems those tools identified. Professor Whitmore called this "a perfect closed loop of manufactured compliance."

International Implications

The announcement has triggered a global reassessment of foundational documents.

France immediately submitted its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to algorithmic review, with President Macron noting that "if America's founding document is synthetic, we need to know if ours is too." Early results suggest the French declaration displays "similar patterns of Enlightenment-derived phrasing," though officials stressed that "correlation is not causation."

The United Kingdom issued a statement expressing concern about the implications for the Magna Carta, which predates AI by approximately 808 years. A spokesperson for the National Archives noted that "if we're applying modern detection standards to historical documents, we may need to reconsider everything written before the invention of autocorrect."

China's Foreign Ministry used the occasion to question the legitimacy of American governance. Spokesperson Wang Xiulan remarked: "If the United States was founded on AI-generated principles, this raises questions about the authenticity of American democracy itself. Perhaps the entire concept of 'self-evident truths' was auto-completed."

Russia's response was more direct. A Kremlin spokesperson stated: "We have always known that American founding mythology was constructed. This merely confirms what our analysts identified in 1953."

The United Nations has called for an emergency session to discuss the implications of "synthetic governance documents" for international law. Secretary-General António Guterres noted that "if founding documents can be retroactively delegitimized, the entire concept of constitutional order is at risk."

Classified Addendum (Leaked)

A leaked annex to the forensic report reveals that the investigation has expanded far beyond the Declaration.

The Constitution is currently under "enhanced review," with preliminary findings suggesting that the document's intricate system of checks and balances displays "architectural sophistication inconsistent with committee authorship." One analyst's margin note reads: "No group of humans agrees on anything this coherently. Definitely prompt-engineered."

The Federalist Papers showed what investigators termed "suspicious batch coherence," with all 85 essays displaying similar rhetorical patterns despite being attributed to three different authors. The report notes that the writing styles of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay are "insufficiently differentiated," suggesting either "extensive collaboration" or "generation from a single model with persona variations."

The Gettysburg Address was flagged as "likely iterative refinement," with analysts noting that the speech's brevity and emotional resonance are "characteristic of outputs optimized through multiple regeneration cycles." One internal margin note simply read: "Lincoln may have been fine-tuning."

Additional documents flagged for review include: the Emancipation Proclamation ("suspiciously well-timed"), Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech ("excessive parallel construction"), and the entirety of Walt Whitman's poetry ("clearly hallucinated").

The Detection Software's Origins

The Federal Academic Integrity Network, the system that flagged the Declaration, was deployed in January as part of a $2.3 billion initiative to combat AI-assisted academic dishonesty.

The software, developed by a consortium of defense contractors and educational technology firms, was designed to analyze text for "synthetic markers" including unusual coherence, sophisticated vocabulary, and what developers call "suspicious confidence levels."

Internal documents reveal that the system was never intended to scan historical documents. The National Archives incident occurred when a software update accidentally expanded the system's crawling parameters to include "all digitized text in federal repositories."

A whistleblower from the development team, speaking anonymously, told this publication: "We trained the system to detect AI writing. We didn't anticipate that it would also detect good writing. Those categories overlap more than anyone wants to admit."

The system's developers have declined to modify the algorithm, arguing that "any changes made to accommodate historical documents would create loopholes that students could exploit." As one engineer stated: "If we make exceptions for Thomas Jefferson, every student in America is going to claim they were just writing like a founding father."

Philosophical Implications

The controversy has sparked broader debates about the nature of authorship, authenticity, and intelligence itself.

Dr. Helena Vance, a professor of Philosophy of Mind at MIT, argued that the detection system reveals fundamental flaws in how we conceptualize human creativity:

"If an algorithm cannot distinguish between Jefferson's writing and machine-generated text, either the algorithm is wrong, or our assumptions about human uniqueness are wrong. Both possibilities should concern us."

Professor Zhang Wei of Beijing University's Institute for AI Ethics offered a different perspective: "Perhaps what we're discovering is that 'human writing' was always a kind of pattern completion. The brain is a prediction machine. Jefferson's genius wasn't that he was original — it was that he predicted what readers needed to hear before they knew they needed it."

Philosopher Cornel West, reached for comment, said: "We're witnessing late capitalism's final move — commodifying authenticity so thoroughly that even authenticity itself becomes suspect. When the Declaration of Independence fails an AI test, we haven't learned anything about the Declaration. We've learned something about tests."

Political Response

Congressional reaction broke along predictable partisan lines, though both sides found reasons for outrage.

Republican Senator Marcus Thornton of Texas called the investigation "an assault on American heritage," adding: "You can take my Declaration of Independence when you pry it from my cold, dead, algorithm-verified hands."

Democratic Representative Eleanor Washington of California took a different approach: "If we're finally holding the founding fathers accountable for cutting corners, I have a list of other things they got wrong that we should revisit."

The Congressional AI Caucus demanded hearings, with co-chair Senator Patricia Liu stating: "We need to understand how a system designed to catch plagiarizing high schoolers ended up questioning the legitimacy of American democracy."

Former President Trump posted on Truth Social: "The Declaration of Independence is the greatest document ever written, probably by humans, but we're looking into it, and if it was AI, it was the best AI, the most American AI."

President Biden's press secretary issued a statement affirming that "the President believes the Declaration of Independence was written by humans, as indicated by historical consensus, though he respects the independence of federal agencies to conduct their investigations."

Industry Analysis

Wall Street analysts have begun issuing guidance on the "historical authenticity sector," projecting significant growth as institutions worldwide scramble to verify their foundational documents.

Morgan Stanley released a report titled "The Authenticity Premium," arguing that "verified human authorship" will become a key differentiator for constitutional democracies seeking foreign investment. Countries whose founding documents pass AI detection will be rated as "Authenticity Grade A," while those with flagged documents will face "sovereign credibility discounts."

Goldman Sachs has created a new financial instrument: "Authenticity Default Swaps," which allow investors to bet on whether specific national documents will be flagged by detection software. Early trading suggests high interest in positions against the Magna Carta and the Code of Hammurabi.

The insurance industry is also responding. Lloyd's of London announced "Historical Document Authenticity Coverage," offering protection against "reputational and legal damages arising from retroactive AI detection." Premiums are reportedly highest for nations founded during the Enlightenment.

What's Next

The Justice Department has set a preliminary hearing for January, though prosecutors acknowledge that "procedural questions remain unresolved," including whether deceased defendants can be represented by counsel and whether their estates are liable for legal fees.

The Department of Education has announced a six-month moratorium on expulsions for AI-related academic integrity violations while it "recalibrates standards in light of recent findings."

The National Archives is accepting public comments on proposed labeling requirements for historical documents, with options ranging from "Verified Human" to "Authorship Uncertain" to "Probably Synthetic (But We're Keeping It Anyway)."

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of legislators has introduced the "Historical Document Grandfather Act," which would exempt all documents created before 1900 from AI detection requirements. Critics have called the legislation "arbitrary," noting that "the cutoff date conveniently excludes anyone who could file a defamation lawsuit."

Update: Following publication, the National Archives reported a 340% increase in visitors requesting to "see the flagged document in person." Gift shop sales of Declaration replicas have tripled, with many customers asking whether the copies "pass detection."

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Benjamin Franklin's grocery list was flagged at 94.1%. The correct figure is 87.3%. The Archives notes that the phrase "more kites" tested as "plausibly human."