Trump pardons 18 co-defendants in Georgia election case, but it won’t void state charges

President Donald Trump signed a sweeping set of preemptive pardons that includes all 18 of his co-defendants in the Fulton County election interference case, a senior Justice Department aide said Monday.

The pardons are largely symbolic, because none of the people named are currently charged in federal court. And they have no meaningful impact on the Georgia racketeering case involving the 2020 election, since it involves state charges.

Still, they show Trump is still trying to reframe the narrative surrounding his election losses five years ago in Georgia and elsewhere.

It also comes at a moment when the Georgia case is on life support after its lead prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, was removed from the case. A state agency has until Friday to name a replacement prosecutor under a deadline set by a Fulton judge.

“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 Presidential Election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” states the text of a proclamation Trump signed Friday, which was posted overnight on social media by Justice Department official Ed Martin.

Trump’s proclamation largely focuses on people involved in advancing slates of GOP electors in swing states won by Democrat Joe Biden, including Georgia.

It issues pardons to all 16 of the Republican activists who signed a document claiming to be Georgia’s duly elected presidential electors on Dec. 14, 2020.

Three of those people were ultimately charged in the Fulton election interference case: former Georgia GOP head David Shafer, state Sen. Shawn Still and ex-Coffee County GOP chairwoman Cathy Latham.

The bulk of the other Trump electors in Georgia struck immunity deals with Fulton prosecutors in exchange for their cooperation. A state prosecutor declined to pursue charges against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who served as a GOP elector and is now a leading Republican candidate for governor.

The proclamation also names a set of attorneys who advised the GOP electors and were charged in Fulton, including Ken Chesebro, John Eastman and Ray Smith.

Chesebro struck a plea deal with Fulton prosecutors in fall 2023, along with three others Trump pardoned Friday, attorneys Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis and bail bondsman Scott Hall.

The pardons also include the others who were indicted in August 2023, accused of being part of a criminal conspiracy to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.

They include those involved in providing false testimony to Georgia lawmakers in the aftermath of the election, and three people accused of harassing Fulton County poll worker Ruby Freeman. Trump also pardoned his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and his onetime personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who are also charged in Fulton.

In late 2023, a federal jury ruled that Giuliani must pay Freeman and her daughter, another former Fulton poll worker, more than $148 million in damages for falsely accusing them of voting fraud.

The pardons do not apply to Trump himself, the proclamation clarified. Trump still faces felony charges in Fulton County, but many constitutional scholars believe it would be virtually impossible to prosecute him here until after he leaves office in 2029.

By the end of the week, Pete Skandalakis, the head of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, is slated to announce whether he has found a new prosecutor to lead the Fulton case. Skandalakis was tasked with doing so after the state Supreme Court declined to overturn an appeals court ruling that removed Willis and the entire Fulton DA’s office from the case because of a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, the outside attorney she hired to oversee the case.