President Donald Trump‘s pardons of allies who tried to overturn his 2020 election loss are being slammed as corrupt by critics who say it signals a message to others who may be accused of committing a crime on his behalf.
On Monday, Department of Justice pardon attorney Ed Martin confirmed that Trump issued “full, complete, and unconditional” pardons to Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Trump’s attorney, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and others, who were charged for their alleged part in a plot to overturn the 2020 election results.
The proclamation said the president’s executive actions put an end to “grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 presidential election and continues the process of national reconciliation.”
On his first day in office on Jan. 20, Trump also pardoned more than 1,500 individuals charged for their part in the violent and deadly Jan. 6, 2021 riot. After losing the 2020 election to now-former President Joe Biden, Trump repeatedly claimed that the election was “rigged” as a result of voter fraud.
U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, rebuked the latest Trump pardons as “completely and totally out of control.”
“He can find the time to pardon a serial fraudster like George Santos (former Republican congressman), but can’t find any time to sit down with Democrats on Capitol Hill who represent half the country in order to address the health care crisis that Republicans have created as devastating people in urban America, rural America, working class America, small town America, the heartland of America and Black and brown communities throughout America.”
Jeffries, who received a death threat from a Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by Trump, continued, “This guy pardons hundreds of violent felons who brutally beat police officers, 140 of whom were seriously injured, life-threatening injuries, in many cases, and then unleashes these people on communities all across the country in ways that put those communities at risk.”
The Democratic leader added, “What we’ve seen from Donald Trump since day one, since those toxic pardons of those violent individuals, is more of the same from a person who promised to lower costs on day one.”
Svante Myrick, president of People For the American Way, told theGrio, “This is the most outrageously dangerous and illegal use of a presidential pardon power in American history.”
The civil rights advocate and former mayor of Ithaca, New York, said it’s the “exact nightmare scenario” that the framers of the U.S. Constitution feared.
“[They] thought that this ardent power could be used in extraordinary circumstances when there’s been a miscarriage of justice…the most dangerous possible use of a pardon power would be for a corrupt president to pardon his own criminal thugs,” said Myrick.
If there was to be another violent insurrection on behalf of Trump, Myrick warned, “They’ve now gotten the message loud and clear that there are no consequences.”
Civil rights attorney and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Sherrilyn Ifill, similarly cautioned, “Trump knows there’s some weakness in his ranks. Last week was brutal. His lawyers, cabinet members, DHS officials, were starting to get spooked. He needed to remind them, to shore them up.”
She added, “The pardons are a message to those in his Administration that he will never let them face accountability for the crimes they commit on his behalf.”
