Trump pardons Rudy Giuliani and others involved in efforts to overturn 2020 election

Washington: US President Donald Trump has pre-emptively pardoned his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and numerous conservative activists accused of supporting his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Ed Martin, the Trump administration’s pardon attorney, posted on social media a signed proclamation of the “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon, which also names conservative lawyers Sidney Powell and John Eastman. The proclamation explicitly said the pardon did not apply to Trump.

The order “ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 election, and continues the process of natural reconciliation”, the document said.

“Let their healing begin,” Martin posted on X. From his personal account, Martin said the pardon was “wet” – signed by Trump in ink, not using an automatic pen, for which Trump has mocked his predecessor Joe Biden.

The pardons are largely symbolic, as they only apply to federal crimes, and none of the people were charged in federal cases. They could shield the named individuals against future federal charges, although the statute of limitations now effectively precludes those being brought.

But the pardons do not prevent or hinder prosecutions under state law. Guiliani and Meadows are among those still facing criminal charges related to the election at a state level. They deny wrongdoing.

The full list of pardons included dozens of people accused of being part of the “fake electors” scheme in the aftermath of the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Biden.

The scheme involved Trump’s allies attempting to convince Republican-controlled legislatures in key states won by Biden to replace their delegates to the electoral college – which formally decides the presidency – with Trump-friendly electors.

Trump’s allies also tried to use the fake electors to convince then vice president Mike Pence to refuse to certify the results of the election.

Defenders of the scheme call the recruited agents “alternative electors”, not fake electors. Martin, again from his personal X account, used that term and said the president had encouraged him to look into pardons for people “targeted” by the Biden administration.

“When I began as US Pardon Attorney, [Trump] encouraged us to look at two categories of Americans especially: First, those who needed and deserved clemency, especially long-serving inmates who are ready to be released. Second, he wanted us to look at those people who had been targeted by the Biden administration,” he claimed.

“The targeted is a huge group of Americans. We’ve been working hard to find them and one group that jumped up right away is the 2030 alternate electors and their affiliates who were targeted by [Justice Department lawyer and special prosecutor] Jack Smith and others.”

Martin said Attorney-General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche – a former personal lawyer to Trump – pushed the team to issue the pardons “right and fast”. “There are many more Americans who Biden targeted,” he said. “And we’re working to help them. God bless us all.”

Trump’s latest move underscores his efforts to continue to rewrite the history of the 2020 election. His first act as president was to grant clemency to about 1600 people charged or convicted over the January 6, 2021 riots at the US Capitol in Washington, where his supporters stormed Congress in his name.

Giuliani played a key role in the fake electors scheme, as well as Trump’s wider attempts to overturn the election results. In 2023, Giuliani was ordered to pay $US148 million ($227 million) to two election workers in Georgia after a court found he defamed them by falsely accusing them of trying to steal the election away from Trump. He has also been banned from practising law in New York and Washington, DC.

The president has pledged to award Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honour.

With AP

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