Trump pardons Rudy Giuliani and others who backed efforts to overturn 2020 election, official says

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and others accused of backing the Republican's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a Justice Department official says.

Ed Martin, the government's pardon attorney, posted on social media a signed proclamation of the “full, complete, and unconditional" pardon, which also names Sidney Powell, an attorney who promoted baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election, and John Eastman, another lawyer who pushed a plan to keep Trump in power. The proclamation, posted online late Sunday, explicitly says the pardon does not apply to Trump.

Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, and none of the Trump allies named were charged in federal cases over the 2020 election. But the move underscores Trump's continued efforts to promote the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from him even though courts around the country and U.S. officials found no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome. It follows the sweeping pardons of the hundreds of Trump supporters charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, including those convicted of attacking law enforcement.

The proclamation described efforts to prosecute those accused of aiding Trump's efforts to cling to power as "a grave national injustice perpetrated on the American people” and said the pardons were designed to continue “the process of national reconciliation.”

The White House didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment Monday.

Also pardoned were Republicans who acted as fake electors for Trump in 2020 and were charged in state cases accusing them of submitting false certificates that confirmed they were legitimate electors despite Democrat Joe Biden's victory in those states. Another key figure on the list is Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who championed Trump's efforts to challenge his election loss.

Trump himself was indicted on felony charges accusing him of working overturn his 2020 election defeat, but the case brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith was abandoned in November after Trump's victory over Democrat Kamala Harris because of the department's policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. Giuliani, Powell, Eastman and Clark were alleged co-conspirators in the federal case brought against Trump but were never charged with federal crimes.

Giuliani, Meadows and others named in the proclamation had been charged by prosecutors in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin over the 2020 election, but the cases have hit a dead end or are just limping along. A judge in September dismissed the Michigan case against 15 Republicans accused of attempting to falsely certify Trump as the winner of the election in that battleground state.

Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, was one of the most vocal supporters of Trump's unsubstantiated claims of large-scale voter fraud after the 2020 election. He has since been disbarred in Washington, D.C., and New York over his advocacy of Trump's bogus election claims and lost a $148 million defamation case brought by two former Georgia election workers whose lives were upended by conspiracy theories he pushed.

Eastman, a former dean of Chapman University Law School in Southern California, was a close adviser to Trump in the wake of the 2020 election and wrote a memo laying out steps Vice President Mike Pence could take to stop the counting of electoral votes while presiding over Congress’ joint session on Jan. 6 to keep Trump in office.