The White House announced late Sunday that President Donald Trump has pardoned several key members of his 2020 campaign legal team including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro for their roles in the “fake electors” scheme that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The announcement, released at 10:54 p.m. local time by Trump’s clemency adviser Ed Martin, included a list of 77 individuals granted pardons. Among them were several operatives and state-level figures who participated in efforts to submit alternate slates of electors in battleground states won by Joe Biden, including Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan.
The scheme, coordinated with Trump’s senior advisers, was part of a broader effort to contest Biden’s victory and culminated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to stop certification of the election results.
The pardon list also included members of Trump’s former administration who facilitated communications between campaign officials, conservative activists, and sympathetic lawmakers. Among them was Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Rudi Giuliani was the public face of the Trump campaign’s legal team in 2020
AP
In a pointed omission, the statement clarified that Trump did not pardon himself.
The timing of the announcement coincided with late-night Senate votes to end a 40-day government shutdown, a move some observers viewed as an attempt to bury the controversial news amid larger political developments.
Giuliani, the public face of Trump’s post-election legal campaign, had been disbarred in Washington, D.C., and New York for his role in promoting baseless voter fraud claims. Powell, Chesebro, and others were central to both the legal and extralegal efforts to challenge the results, including lawsuits and coordination of false elector certificates.
Multiple courts rejected the Trump campaign’s lawsuits for lack of evidence, and subsequent investigations found no proof of widespread fraud. The campaign’s claims against Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic also collapsed, leading to major defamation settlements including Dominion’s $787 million victory against Fox News.
Giuliani, once celebrated as “America’s Mayor” after 9/11, became a symbol of Trump’s failed election challenge. His later financial and legal troubles underscored the personal cost of his alliance with Trump one that, with this pardon, has now come full circle.
