Trump’s sweeping 2020 election pardon raises alarms ahead of the midterms – Politico
Trump’s sweeping 2020 election pardon raises alarms ahead of the midterms
The language in the pardon also underscores that Trump’s clemency is not limited to people named in the document.
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media following a swearing in ceremony for Sergio Gor, the new U.S. Ambassador to India, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, on Nov. 10, 2025. | Craig Hudson for POLITICO
By Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, 11/10/2025 07:21 PM EST
President Donald Trump’s adversaries say his sweeping pardon for dozens of alleged co-conspirators in the plot to subvert the 2020 election sent an unmistakable signal: If you do it again, I’ll protect you.
The extraordinarily broad pardon, signed Friday but revealed Sunday night, has little substantive effect for its recipients. Trump can pardon only federal crimes, and his administration had already pulled the plug on any lingering investigations stemming from the 2020 election. Some of the clemency recipients are still facing state-level criminal charges in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin — though some Trump allies argue the pardons could derail those cases.
The mass pardon — the first in history to cover people accused of criminally conspiring with the president who issued it — comes as Trump continues to stoke false claims about rampant cheating by Democrats and sow doubts about the integrity of future elections. And his opponents see the pardon as a permission slip for similar efforts in 2026 and 2028.
“Trump is sending a message to his supporters that if you commit a crime in the name of Donald Trump, I’ve got your back,” said Liz Oyer, the former U.S. pardon attorney, whose successor Ed Martin announced the sweeping clemency on X and released a 15-page statement explaining the move.
Oyer said the pardon was written so broadly that it could apply to countless people who aided Trump’s effort to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election — and the vaguely worded document permits Martin and other Justice Department officials to decide for themselves who receives a pardon certificate.
“That’s just not how pardon paperwork is written,” Oyer said.
The move also appeared to be a way for Trump to test the well-settled boundaries of the pardon power itself, with allies like Martin and election attorney Cleta Mitchell suggesting it should cause the pending state cases to crumble. The pair argue that the presidential pardon could cover state-law crimes because the purported electors were engaged in activity related to a federal election, though legal scholars say that rationale is a stretch. A spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Trump’s pardon would not influence her handling of the case there, which has remained in limbo as she fights a judge’s ruling that the grand jury process was flawed.
Mayes’ office charged 18 of Trump’s allies last spring for their efforts to subvert the 2020 election and labeled Trump an unindicted co-conspirator. Mayes brought her case last year, several months after Fulton County prosecutors in Georgia charged Trump himself with orchestrating a conspiracy to corrupt the state’s election results. State prosecutors in Nevada and Wisconsin have charged people connected to Trump’s alleged conspiracy. All of the cases remain pending, though they’ve been mired in varying degrees of dysfunction and protracted litigation.
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