Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, both close former political allies of Donald Trump, are among scores of people pardoned by the president over the weekend for their roles in a plot to steal the 2020 election.
The maneuver is in effect symbolic, given it only applies in the federal justice system and not in state courts where Giuliani, Meadows and the others continue facing legal peril. The acts of clemency were announced in a post late on Sunday to X by US pardon attorney Ed Martin, covers 77 people said to have been the architects and agents of the scheme to install fake Republican electors in several battleground states, which would have falsely declared Trump their winner instead of the actual victor: Joe Biden.
Those pardoned include Giuliani and Sidney Powell, former lawyers to Trump, and Meadows, who acted as White House chief of staff during his first term of office. Other prominent names include Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, attorneys who advised Trump during and immediately after the election that Biden won to interrupt Trump’s two terms.
“Let their healing begin,” Martin said in the post, in which he thanked Trump, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, and her deputy, Todd Blanche, for “allowing me … to achieve your intent”.
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Martin is a staunchly conservative ally of the president said to be behind the “weaponization” of the justice department and a push to “bully, prosecute, punish and silence” Trump’s political foes and critics, including the recent indictments of the former FBI director James Comey, New York attorney general, Leticia James, and former national security adviser John Bolton.
The pardons extend Trump’s efforts to rewrite the aftermath of the 2020 election and failed efforts to deny Biden the White House. On his first day back in office in January, Trump issued “full, complete and unconditional” presidential pardons for more than 1,500 people involved in the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress, in which five people died and many others, including law enforcement officers, were injured during a desperate attempt by his supporters to keep him in office.
Many of those listed in Martin’s pardon document, which it specifically states “does not apply to the president of the United States”, were involved in legal cases and investigations in numerous states that Biden won, including Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.
The pardons, like those for the 6 January rioters, are “full, complete and unconditional” – and apply only in federal court, making them “largely symbolic”, according to the New York Times.
Proceedings against some of the individuals are still active at state level, including in Georgia, where an election interference case against an initial 19 defendants, including Trump, has stalled due to the disqualification of the Fulton county prosecutor, Fani Willis.