AILSA CHANG, HOST:
President Trump has pardoned almost 80 people who took part in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Among those to receive a pardon include some of Trump's most prominent allies, including his one-time personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas has been covering this and joins us now. Hi, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
CHANG: OK. So what more can you tell us about all these pardons?
LUCAS: So the Justice Department pardon attorney, Ed Martin, announced these in a social media post late Sunday night. He posted a four-page document signed by President Trump that grants a full, complete and unconditional pardon in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including efforts to expose purported voting fraud. Now, it says the pardons extend to all U.S. citizens, but it specifically lists the names of nearly 80 people who are covered by it. That includes several top allies, including the two gentlemen who you mentioned at the top, Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows. But there are other names that might ring a bell as well - Attorney Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, who worked with Giuliani to push baseless claims that the election was stolen. There's former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark. It also covers a number of state-level folks who participated in alternate slates of electors to try to challenge Biden's 2020 election win.
CHANG: Right. OK. So just explain for people, what is the practical effect of these pardons?
LUCAS: Well, look, these are largely symbolic. Presidential pardons, of course, only apply to federal crimes. None of these folks are currently facing federal charges in connection with the events of 2020. Some of them are facing charges at the state level, but those cases are limping along, basically, at this point. But again, these pardons don't protect them from state-level charges anyway.
CHANG: And what has the White House said about the decision to grant all of these pardons?
LUCAS: Well, look, White House press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a statement, called the people who received pardons great Americans. She went on to say that they were persecuted and put through - as she put it - hell by the Biden administration for challenging an election. She said that getting prosecuted for challenging election results is what happens in Venezuela. And she said that the Trump administration, that the president, is putting an end to what she called, quote, "the Biden regime's communist tactics." Now, the pardon proclamation itself says that this ends what it calls a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people after the 2020 election, and it says that these pardons continue what it calls the process of national reconciliation.
CHANG: OK. I get that that's the White House's line. But Ryan, how do you think these pardons are going to fit into this broader battle over how the American public remembers the 2020 presidential election?
LUCAS: So it's important to remember here that President Trump himself faced federal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election. That case was brought by former special counsel Jack Smith. That case never made it to trial. But look, Trump and his allies have been trying for years to whitewash Trump's actions following the 2020 election. Trump himself has tried to paint the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his own supporters as a peaceful event. The Justice Department, under the Biden administration, of course, investigated and prosecuted the people who took part in that attack.
And then Trump, in one of his first moves when he got back into the White House, pardoned some 1,500 people who faced charges in connection with the Capitol riot, including people who beat police officers with flag poles or attacked them with chemical spray. Now, these new pardons would seem very much to fit into that broader effort by the president and his allies to rewrite history.
CHANG: That is NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thank you, Ryan.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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