WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his onetime chief of staff Mark Meadows and others accused of backing the Republican’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon for dozens of Trump allies are largely symbolic. It applies only to federal crimes, and none of the people named in the proclamation were ever charged federally over the bid to subvert the election won by Democrat Joe Biden. It doesn’t affect state charges, though state prosecutions stemming from the 2020 election have hit a dead end or are just limping along.
The move, however, underscores Trump’s continued efforts to promote the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from him even though courts around the country and Trump’s own attorney general at the time found no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome. Reviews, recounts and audits of the election in the battleground states where Trump contested his loss also affirmed Biden’s victory.
Trump’s recent action follows the sweeping pardons of the hundreds of Trump supporters charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, including those convicted of attacking law enforcement.
Ed Martin, the Department of Justice’s point-man on pardons and a former lawyer for Jan. 6 defendants, linked his announcement of the pardons to a post on X that read “No MAGA left behind.”
Dozens of Trump allies received pardons
Among those also pardoned were Sidney Powell, an attorney who promoted baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election, John Eastman, another lawyer who pushed a plan to keep Trump in power, and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who championed Trump’s efforts to challenge his election loss.
Also named were Republicans who acted as fake electors for Trump and were charged in state cases accusing them of submitting false certificates that confirmed they were legitimate electors despite Biden’s victory in those states.
The proclamation explicitly says the pardon does not apply to the president himself, who has continued to repeat the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, used that falsehood to argue for sweeping changes in the way the country votes and demanded his Department of Justice investigate the vote count that led to his loss.
The pardon described efforts to prosecute the Trump allies as “a grave national injustice perpetrated on the American people” and said the pardons were designed to continue “the process of national reconciliation.” Giuliani and others have denied any wrongdoing, arguing they were simply challenging an election they believed was tainted by fraud.
“These great Americans were persecuted and put through hell by the Biden Administration for challenging an election, which is the cornerstone of democracy,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement.
Those pardoned were not prosecuted by the Biden administration, however. They were charged only by state prosecutors who operate separately from the Justice Department.
An Associated Press investigation after the 2020 election found 475 cases of potential voter fraud across the six battleground states, far too few to change the outcome.
Impact of the pardons is limited
Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, was one of the most vocal supporters of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of large-scale voter fraud after the 2020 election. He also is an example of the limited impact of the pardons.
Giuliani has been disbarred in Washington, D.C., and New York over his advocacy of Trump’s bogus election claims and lost a $148 million defamation case brought by two former Georgia election workers whose lives were upended by conspiracy theories he pushed. Since pardons only absolve people from legal responsibility for federal crimes, they’re unlikely to ease Giuliani’s legal woes.
Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, said the former mayor “never sought a pardon but is deeply grateful for President Trump’s decision.”
“Mayor Rudy Giuliani stands by his work following the 2020 presidential election, when he responded to the legitimate concerns of thousands of everyday Americans,” Goodman said in an emailed statement.
