Trump pardons Rudy Giuliani, others who backed efforts to overturn 2020 election, official says

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, according to a Justice Department official.

Ed Martin, the government’s pardon attorney, posted on social media a signed proclamation of the “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon.

The list released by Martin includes dozens of Trump's political allies, and also names conservative lawyers Sidney Powell and John Eastman.

"No MAGA left behind," Martin posted on X before sharing the signed document.

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 suggested they were legitimate electors despite Biden’s victory in those states.

The proclamation explicitly says the pardon does not apply to Trump.

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 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 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.

Trump himself was indicted on felony charges accusing him of working to 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, Powell, Eastman and Clark were alleged co-conspirators in the federal case brought against Trump, but were never charged with federal crimes.

Giuliani, Meadows and others named in the proclamation had been charged by prosecutors in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin over the 2020 election, but the cases have repeatedly hit roadblocks or have been dismissed. 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.

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 has since been disbarred in Washington, D.C., and New York over his advocacy of Trump’s bogus election claims and lost a $148-million US defamation case brought by two former Georgia election workers whose lives were upended by conspiracy theories he pushed.