Since returning to office in January, President Donald Trump has repeatedly used the power of the presidential pardon to erase federal charges and convictions against thousands of his supporters. For example, Trump issued a blanket pardon for the thousands of people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol that Trump himself incited. Now he has pardoned the people who allegedly falsified documents and otherwise conspired to have Trump declare victory in states he didn’t win in the 2020 election. The move once more seeks to declare that his blatantly illegal efforts to hoodwink, cajole, and bully election officials and Congress into falsely declaring him the winner were, in fact, perfectly fine.
After losing to Joe Biden, Trump’s allies put into motion a scheme that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack. Republican electors in key states sent an “alternate slate” of Electoral College votes to Congress, in the expectation that Vice President Mike Pence would accept as he falsely declared that there’d been rampant voter fraud. The plan was based on an entirely unhinged reading of election law and fell apart when Pence wouldn’t play his assigned role despite the threat of the mob.
Since then, many of the players in that farcical drama have faced criminal charges for violating various states’ election laws in the process. Others have been disbarred or otherwise ostracized. But Trump has been moving to rewrite history, in effect declaring that there was nothing shady at all about his plotting.
This is a preview of Hayes Brown's latest column. Read the full column here.
