Last night, President Donald Trump exercised his Article II, Section 2 power to grant pardons to some of his most intrepid supporters during the chaotic aftermath of the rigged 2020 election. In doing so, he at least partially righted some of the most grievous wrongs of the Autopen Administration.
The Constitution states that the president has the authority to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Read it and weep, you lawfare lefties.
The only question I have is: What took Trump so long? The pardons, after all, come months after the president pardoned approximately 1,500 January 6 defendants.
As the proclamation issued last night by Trump’s pardon attorney, Ed Martin, put it, the pardon extends “to all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities, participation in, or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of Presidential electors, whether or not recognized by any State or State official, in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election, as well for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 Presidential Election.”
As Martin put it in a separate post: “POTUS encouraged us to look at two categories of Americans especially: First, those who needed and deserved clemency, especially long serving inmates who are ready to be released. Second, he wanted us to look at those people who had been targeted by the Biden administration. The targeted is a huge group of Americans.”
Or, more succinctly, as Martin said back in May: “No MAGA left behind.”
When Trump won reelection resoundingly last year, I figured it was only a matter of time before such legal stalwarts as Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, as well as key advisers such as then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, were pardoned. For example, the lawfare leveled against Eastman, a constitutional scholar, was nothing short of vile. As I wrote in April of last year:
It doesn’t matter that Eastman has a law degree from the University of Chicago. Or that he clerked for Clarence Thomas. Or that he served for decades as professor of constitutional law and dean of Chapman Law School. Or that he founded the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Claremont Institute. It doesn’t matter that he’s been involved in more than 200 constitutional cases before the Supreme Court over the past 20 years, including advising Florida’s legislature in Bush v. Gore. Doesn’t matter that he was an Eagle Scout, a former Boy Scout troop leader, and that he sang in the church choir.
No, he provided legal counsel to Trump about a presidential election that two-thirds of Republicans believe was illegitimate. For that, Eastman must be destroyed. And lawfare is the weapon of choice among the Trump-deranged.
Eastman’s particular “crime” was to advise the sitting president about the submission of alternate electors in tightly contested swing states in the aftermath of the 2020 election, just as had been done twice before — in 1876 and 1960 — both times by Democrats and both times without legal consequence. When the Trump team exercised this same legal maneuver, however, the Democrats and their mainstream media water-carriers called these alternate electors “fake electors,” and their leftist lawfare hounds set to work on weaponizing the Department of Justice to bankrupt Eastman and destroy his life.
So, going forward, whenever some Trump-deranged leftist starts prattling on about “fake electors,” remind him that the correct term is “alternate electors,” just as it was with two prior Democrats.
Unfortunately, there’s a limit to these presidential pardons. As The Blaze puts it: “Although providing a clean slate and shield where federal charges are concerned, the pardons are largely symbolic, as they are unlikely to help those facing state-level prosecutions — such as those defendants facing charges in Nevada, those embroiled in the so-called ‘fake electors’ case in Arizona’s Maricopa County, and those who recently lost their appeal to move their Georgia case to federal court.”
So, for many of these folks, the fight isn’t yet over. In the meantime, though, it seems the least we can do is tell these patriotic Americans where they can go to get their reputations back — not to mention the untold millions that a weaponized Department of Justice squeezed out of them as they fought to stay out of prison.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt summed things up nicely: “These great Americans were persecuted and put through hell by the Biden administration for challenging an election, which is the cornerstone of democracy. Getting prosecuted for challenging results is something that happens in communist Venezuela, not the United States of America, and President Trump is putting an end to the Biden regime’s communist tactics once and for all.”
