Trump pardons 18 co-defendants in Georgia election case, but it won’t void state charges

It also comes at a moment when the Georgia case is on life support after its lead prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, was removed from the case. A state agency has until Friday to name a replacement prosecutor under a deadline set by a Fulton judge.

Additionally, the pardons could protect against any efforts by a future administration to target Trump supporters who questioned the 2020 election results.

“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 Presidential Election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” states the text of a proclamation Trump signed Friday, which was posted overnight on social media by Justice Department official Ed Martin. In total, 77 people were included on the list.

Trump’s proclamation largely focuses on people involved in advancing slates of GOP electors in swing states won by Democrat Joe Biden, including Georgia.

It issues pardons to all 16 of the Republican activists who signed a document claiming to be Georgia’s duly elected presidential electors on Dec. 14, 2020.

Three of those people were ultimately charged in the Fulton election interference case: former Georgia GOP head David Shafer, state Sen. Shawn Still and ex-Coffee County GOP chairwoman Cathy Latham.

The bulk of the other Trump electors in Georgia struck immunity deals with Fulton prosecutors in exchange for their cooperation. A state prosecutor declined to pursue charges against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who served as a GOP elector and is now a leading Republican candidate for governor.

The proclamation also names a set of attorneys who advised the GOP electors and were charged in Fulton, including Ken Chesebro, John Eastman and Ray Smith.

Chesebro struck a plea deal with Fulton prosecutors in fall 2023, along with three others Trump pardoned Friday, attorneys Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis and bail bondsman Scott Hall.

The pardons also fold in the others who were indicted in August 2023, accused of being part of a criminal conspiracy to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.

They include those involved in providing false testimony to Georgia lawmakers in the aftermath of the election, and three people accused of harassing Fulton County poll worker Ruby Freeman. Trump also pardoned his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and his onetime personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who are charged in Fulton.

In late 2023, a federal jury ruled that Giuliani must pay Freeman and her daughter, another former Fulton poll worker, more than $148 million in damages for falsely accusing them of voting fraud.

The pardons do not apply to Trump himself, the proclamation clarified. Trump still faces felony charges in Fulton County, but many constitutional scholars believe it would be virtually impossible to prosecute him here until after he leaves office in 2029.

Several of the defendants charged in the Fulton case took to social media Monday to thank Trump for pardoning them.

“GOD IS GOOD. ALL THE TIME. THANK YOU (Trump),” Trevian Kutti, a Chicago publicist who was charged with allegedly pressuring Freeman to confess to false voting fraud allegations, wrote on X.

Jeff Clark, a former Justice Department attorney who tried unsuccessfully to get DOJ to intervene in the Georgia election, said he did not seek a pardon. He urged supporters to donate to his legal defense fund to fight the Georgia case and a separate effort to disbar him.

“I did nothing wrong when I questioned the 2020 election in Georgia, including by drafting an unsent privileged letter urging Georgia officials to launch their own investigations and then decide for themselves how to proceed,” Clark wrote on X.

Josh McKoon, the head of the Georgia GOP, urged Trump to hold an event at the White House with all of the electors to underscore their “exoneration” and “total innocence.”

McKoon also called for the creation of a presidential task force to review the circumstances surrounding the state cases against Republican electors and ensure “this perversion of our criminal justice system never happens again.”

That could include financial compensation. (The Georgia GOP has footed the legal bills for the three Trump electors who were indicted in Fulton.)

Kayla Lott, a campaign spokeswoman for Jones, similarly said Willis and Biden “owe the taxpayers an apology and a refund.”

“ (T)his is the final confirmation that this whole thing was a charade led by Joe Biden and Fani Willis,” she said.

By the end of the week, Pete Skandalakis, the head of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, is slated to announce whether he has found a new prosecutor to lead the Fulton case. Skandalakis was tasked with doing so after the state Supreme Court declined to overturn an appeals court ruling that removed Willis and the entire Fulton DA’s office from the case because of a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, the outside attorney she hired to oversee the case.

The new prosecutor, if Skandalakis can find one, will decide whether to move forward with the case as-is, slim it down or kill it entirely.

In a statement Monday, Skandalakis said he did not think Trump’s pardons changed the task before him.

“We will continue to carry out our responsibilities without being influenced by matters outside the scope of our assigned task, with the goal of complying fully with” the judge’s Friday deadline, he said.

Here are the people charged in the Fulton election interference case whom Trump pardoned:

Staff writer Greg Bluestein contributed to this article.