Trump Pardons Rudy Giuliani and Others Involved in Effort to Overturn 2020 Election

The pardons of former Trump aides, which would only apply in federal court, are largely symbolic and cannot shield them from continuing state-level prosecutions.

President Trump has granted pardons to his former lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and a wide array of other people accused of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.

The pardon attorney, Ed Martin, a lawyer who has long supported the rioters who were themselves granted clemency by Mr. Trump for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, posted a copy of the pardon proclamation on social media early Monday morning with a list of those who were covered by it.

Aside from Mr. Giuliani, the list included John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who advised Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign; Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; Boris Epshteyn, a top presidential adviser; and Sidney Powell, another lawyer who led one of the most far-fetched efforts to use the courts to reverse Mr. Trump’s electoral defeat.

The pardons, which only apply to federal crimes, are primarily symbolic. None of those named on the list are currently facing federal charges, and the pardons cannot shield them from continuing state-level prosecutions.

Even though the pardons will have little practical effect, they stand as a reminder that Mr. Trump has often used his expansive powers to reward and protect his allies, even as his Justice Department has shattered traditional norms of independence from the White House by following his orders to pursue criminal cases against those he perceives to be his enemies.

In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, called those who had received the pardons “great Americans,” claiming they had been “put through hell by the Biden administration for challenging an election.”

The proclamation announcing the pardons said they had been issued as a corrective measure to address “a grave national injustice” that took place when the 2020 election went against Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. became the president.

It represented, among other things, the latest effort by Mr. Trump to sustain the lie that the vote count had been rigged against him in 2020 and to rewrite the history of Jan. 6, which he has repeatedly referred to as “a day of love” despite the violence that erupted against scores of police officers protecting the Capitol.

Beyond Mr. Trump’s lawyers and advisers, the pardons covered several state-level officials who submitted so-called fake slates of electors to the Electoral College, falsely claiming that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 race in states that were actually won by Mr. Biden. Many of those officials are still facing prosecution on state charges.

The broad language of the proclamation, granting “full, complete and unconditional” pardons to everyone on the list, was likely to protect those named against any future efforts to bring federal charges related to the 2020 election. It could also cover many others who sought to challenge the results of the election, including members of Congress who took part in the campaign to pressure Vice President Mike Pence not to certify Mr. Biden’s victory.

It remained unclear why Mr. Trump issued the pardons now, more than five years after the election in question took place. The pardons were signed on Friday, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, but the proclamation appeared to be undated.

Still, the move came amid growing frustration among Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters about lingering questions related to Jan. 6 and to a raft of other pardons sitting unsigned on the president’s desk.

Over the weekend, many Trump supporters — including several of the pardoned Jan. 6 rioters — expressed disappointment that the administration had not yet responded to a report by the right-wing media outlet The Blaze that identified the person who planted pipe bombs near the Capitol on Jan. 6 as a former Capitol Police officer. (That report, based on so-called gait analysis, has not been substantiated by the federal law enforcement officials who have been investigating the pipe bomb case for years.)

Other Jan. 6 defendants and their lawyers have raised separate complaints, saying that the Justice Department has been blocking efforts to grant the pardoned rioters some form of financial compensation.

Mr. Giuliani, Ms. Powell, Mr. Epshteyn and Mr. Eastman have not faced federal charges in connection with the 2020 election. But they were identified — albeit not by name — as unindicted co-conspirators in the federal case filed in 2023 by Jack Smith, the special counsel, accusing Mr. Trump of interlocking conspiracies to reverse his defeat to Mr. Biden and to interrupt the transfer of presidential power.

Another person Mr. Trump pardoned, Jeffrey Clark, a former top official at the Justice Department who helped him push the narrative that the election had been stolen, was also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in Mr. Smith’s case. But he was ultimately dropped from the indictment after the Supreme Court ruled that he could not face criminal penalties as part of its decision granting Mr. Trump broad immunity from prosecution for acts he undertook in his official role as president.

After the pardons were announced online, Mr. Martin, wearing his signature Colombo-style trench coat, appeared on a podcast with Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s longtime political adviser, and mischaracterized Mr. Smith’s case. Mr. Martin claimed, without providing evidence, that the special counsel wanted to prosecute “hundreds” of people, including the so-called fake electors, in what he described as a “maxi-trial.”

Mr. Smith brought an indictment against one person: Mr. Trump. While others who took part in the effort to overturn the 2020 election might have ended up in court as witnesses if the case had gone to trial, there is no evidence that anyone else was going to face criminal charges in that case.

A spokesman for Mr. Giuliani, Ted Goodman, said in a statement on Monday that he had not sought the pardon but was “deeply grateful” to Mr. Trump for having issued it.

“Mayor Rudy Giuliani stands by his work following the 2020 presidential election, when he responded to the legitimate concerns of thousands of everyday Americans,” Mr. Goodman said.

Mr. Giuliani, the president’s former lawyer and confidant, was a leading voice in efforts to invalidate the results of the 2020 election. He traveled the country sowing doubt about the results and making widespread statements that the election had been “stolen” from Mr. Trump and that Mr. Biden’s victory was fraudulent.

Mr. Giuliani has faced many legal troubles relating to his false and misleading statements surrounding the 2020 election. In 2024, he was disbarred from practicing law in New York by a judge who said he had “baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country’s electoral process.”

In 2023, Mr. Giuliani was found guilty of defaming two poll workers in Georgia, whom he falsely accused of trying to steal the election from Mr. Trump. The women, who said they endured a torrent of abuse and threats of violence, were later awarded $148 million. The verdict prompted Mr. Giuliani to file for bankruptcy, but his claim was dismissed after a court said he had refused to comply with his reporting requirements.

He and Ms. Powell settled separate lawsuits with Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company that Mr. Giuliani falsely claimed had plotted to flip votes in favor of Mr. Biden.

Ms. Powell was penalized by a federal judge in 2021 for her role in filing multiple lawsuits asserting that a cabal of “deep-state” operatives aided by Venezuelan intelligence agents and the financier George Soros stole the election from Mr. Trump by hacking into Dominion voting machines. In the judge’s ruling imposing the sanctions, she accused Ms. Powell and other lawyers of “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.”

Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Epshteyn, Mr. Meadows and Mr. Eastman are still facing state election interference charges in Arizona, where prosecutors said they were part of a scheme that sought to falsely declare Mr. Trump the winner of that state’s 2020 presidential contest. Part of the effort involved putting pressure on local election officials in Arizona to change results to favor Mr. Trump, prosecutors said.

That case, however, remains in a kind of legal limbo.

Ali Watkins and Ashley Ahn contributed reporting.

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