During his presidency, former President Donald Trump pardoned his now-indicted ally Rudy Giuliani and others for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. This decision could have inadvertently given a broad-sweeping immunity to American citizens participating in voter fraud. That pardon 11 7 20 On November 7, 2020, a presidential pardon was granted. This pardon includes actions related to counseling, drafting, staging, running, filing, circulating, and lobbying for any slate of would-be presidential electors.
Legal scholars have started to analyze what this massive pardon means. Derek Muller is an associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. He stressed that the pardon only covers U.S. citizens. He focused on the broad language of the pardon itself. This could swallow up most, if not all, of the crimes allegedly committed by those seeking to testify in defense of their actions during the 2020 voting process.
It’s quite plausible to read this and suggest that anyone involved in voting for slates of presidential electors in 2020 has now been pardoned,” Muller articulated. This begs the question as to what the ramifications of such a broad interpretation would be on existing and future legal actions against cases of alleged voter fraud.
Matthew Alan Laiss is the subject of one such case. The irony in the hypocrisy He’s being accused of illegally voting in both Pennsylvania and Florida in the 2020 election. Laiss’s legal team contends that Trump’s pardon extends to their client. Further, they claim that Laiss meets the definition of a U.S. citizen under the terms set out by the Supreme Court. Federal prosecutors in the eastern district of Pennsylvania did not respond by deadline. They are, as of this blog post’s production, still mulling the motions to dismiss the charges against Laiss.
Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, agreed with Muller. Additionally, he noted that a federal pardon can shield the pardoned individual from future federal prosecution. It does nothing to stop state-level charges for voting crimes. This duality is what makes the context of Trump’s pardon so complicated — and its deeply damaging, widespread implications.
Liz Oyer, the justice department’s former pardon attorney, emphasized the vagueness in the terms of the pardon. She noted all of its built-in vagueness. “The language is not very precise, and so it’s hard to parse what would fall within it and what would fall outside it without looking at each case individually,” she stated. Oyer noted that this vagueness creates potential for significant legal challenges. Courts will have to critically examine the intent and scope of Trump’s actions as they adjudicate these disputes.
Such a pardon would have far-reaching impacts. This was particularly the case for people such as Ed Martin, a Trump partisan who rode his would-be career as a federal prosecutor in Washington D.C. to becoming the justice department’s pardon attorney during his failed campaign for the office. An unexpected wholesale exoneration would be a personal humiliation for Martin, and an office blot for his no doubt otherwise slick and competent office.
Despite concerns regarding voter fraud, which remains exceedingly rare in the United States, Trump has consistently leveraged the issue to advocate for stricter voting regulations. His administration supported barriers to mail-in voting and the implementation of voter ID laws. They portrayed these measures as necessary protections to guard against imagined electoral vulnerabilities.
Muller explained the risk that could come from creating a legal regime. He cautioned that an unclear pardon might protect a wide swath of people involved in pro-voter efforts. “Here you’ve got kind of a broad set of conduct and an undefined group of individuals who are protected,” Muller noted. This burden will significantly tax judicial resources, as courts will have to evaluate each case based purely on the facts at hand.
Legal scholars are already hard at work parsing the meaning of Trump’s pardon. Nonetheless, doubts remain as to the law’s scope in addressing long-term voting accessibility issues and combating the widespread fraud that characterized the uproarious 2020 election season. The evolving situation will likely necessitate further clarification from judicial authorities as they address the complexities introduced by this unprecedented action.