U.S. President Donald Trump has pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and others accused of backing the Republican's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a Justice Department official says.
Ed Martin, the government's pardon attorney, posted on social media a signed proclamation of the “full, complete, and unconditional" pardon, which also names conservative attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman. The proclamation, posted online late Sunday, explicitly says the pardon does not apply to Trump.
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Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, and none of the Trump allies named were charged in federal cases over the 2020 election. But the move underscores President Donald Trump's continued efforts to rewrite the history of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. It 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.
The proclamation described efforts to prosecute those accused of aiding Trump's efforts to cling to power “as a grave national injustice perpetrated on the American people”. It said the pardons were designed to continue “the process of national reconciliation.”
The White House didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment Monday.
Also pardoned were Republicans who acted as fake electors for Trump in 2020 and were charged in state cases of submitting false certificates that confirmed they were legitimate electors despite Biden's victory in those states.
Trump himself was indicted on felony charges accusing him of working overturn his 2020 election defeat, but the case brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith was abandoned in November after Trump's victory over Democrat Kamala Harris because of the department's policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.
Giuliani, Meadows and others who were named in the proclamation had been charged by state prosecutors over the 2020 election, but the cases have hit a dead end or are just limping along. A judge in September dismissed the Michigan case against 15 Republicans accused of attempting to falsely certify Trump as the winner of the election in that battleground state.
