Trump Pardons Rudy Giuliani and Dozens of Allies in Sweeping Post-Election Move

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has issued one of the most sweep­ing rounds of pres­i­den­tial par­dons in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry, absolv­ing a long list of polit­i­cal allies and advi­sors tied to efforts to chal­lenge or over­turn the results of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

Accord­ing to the Depart­ment of Justice’s Par­don Attor­ney, Ed Mar­tin, the pres­i­dent signed the procla­ma­tion on Novem­ber 7, grant­i­ng “a full, com­plete, and uncon­di­tion­al par­don” to more than 70 indi­vid­u­als. Among those par­doned are sev­er­al of Trump’s clos­est advi­sors and lawyers who became house­hold names dur­ing the elec­tion tur­moil, includ­ing Rudy Giu­liani, Sid­ney Pow­ell, Mark Mead­ows, Jef­frey Clark, John East­man, Ken Chese­bro, Jen­na Ellis, Kel­li Ward, and Boris Epshteyn.

The doc­u­ment, which Mar­tin post­ed pub­licly, describes the mass par­don as an effort to bring “nation­al rec­on­cil­i­a­tion” and to cor­rect what it calls “a grave injus­tice per­pe­trat­ed upon the Amer­i­can peo­ple fol­low­ing the 2020 Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion.” The procla­ma­tion empha­sizes that the par­dons do not apply to the pres­i­dent him­self.

Giu­liani, the for­mer New York City may­or and Trump’s per­son­al attor­ney, was at the cen­ter of mul­ti­ple chal­lenges to the 2020 elec­tion results and is still fac­ing state-lev­el charges in Geor­gia relat­ed to the “fake elec­tors” effort. Pow­ell and Chese­bro, both lawyers involved in sim­i­lar efforts, had plead­ed guilty to charges in that case before the elec­tion. Mead­ows, Trump’s for­mer chief of staff, was also a key fig­ure in the administration’s post-elec­tion strat­e­gy.

The procla­ma­tion also clears for­mer Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial Jef­frey Clark, who was accused of attempt­ing to mis­use the department’s pow­er to sup­port Trump’s elec­tion claims. Clark now serves as a senior offi­cial at the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get.

In addi­tion to those direct­ly involved in the elec­tion efforts, Trump also grant­ed clemen­cy to sev­er­al oth­ers in unre­lat­ed cas­es, includ­ing a retired New York City police offi­cer con­vict­ed in 2023 for act­ing as an agent of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, and for­mer base­ball star Dar­ryl Straw­ber­ry, who was par­doned for a 1995 tax eva­sion con­vic­tion.

While the sweep­ing par­don eras­es any poten­tial fed­er­al crim­i­nal expo­sure for those named, it does not affect state or local pros­e­cu­tions. That means ongo­ing crim­i­nal cas­es in Geor­gia, Ari­zona, Wis­con­sin, and Neva­da remain unaf­fect­ed. Legal experts note that the par­don may nonethe­less become part of future defense argu­ments, with defen­dants claim­ing polit­i­cal moti­va­tion in their pros­e­cu­tions.

White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt hailed the move, call­ing those par­doned “great Amer­i­cans” who had been “per­se­cut­ed and put through hell by the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion for chal­leng­ing an elec­tion.” She added that “get­ting pros­e­cut­ed for ques­tion­ing results is some­thing that hap­pens in com­mu­nist Venezuela, not the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca,” describ­ing Trump’s action as a step to “end the Biden Regime’s com­mu­nist tac­tics once and for all.”

Trump’s deci­sion con­tin­ues a pat­tern of using pres­i­den­tial clemen­cy to defend his polit­i­cal base. One of his first acts after tak­ing office for a sec­ond term was to par­don more than a thou­sand indi­vid­u­als charged or con­vict­ed in con­nec­tion with the Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, Capi­tol riot.

Crit­ics, how­ev­er, warn that the lat­est par­dons could deep­en divi­sions and erode pub­lic con­fi­dence in the jus­tice sys­tem. They argue that while the Con­sti­tu­tion grants the pres­i­dent broad clemen­cy pow­ers, using them to shield polit­i­cal allies blurs the line between jus­tice and loy­al­ty.

Still, Trump’s allies view the move as a long-over­due cor­rec­tion. To them, the pros­e­cu­tions that fol­lowed the 2020 elec­tion rep­re­sent­ed polit­i­cal ret­ri­bu­tion rather than impar­tial law enforce­ment. For his sup­port­ers, the par­dons rep­re­sent the clos­ing of one chap­ter — and the reaf­fir­ma­tion of a pres­i­dent deter­mined to pro­tect those who stood with him dur­ing one of the most con­tentious peri­ods in Amer­i­can polit­i­cal his­to­ry.