Trump’s Fake Elector Pardons Put New Pressure on Local Prosecutors

President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon dozens of people who worked to undermine the 2020 election results is more than a symbolic act. It puts new pressure on the local prosecutors still pursuing democracy-threatening crimes.

The Department of Justice’s “pardon attorney,” Ed Martin, a 2020 “Stop the Steal” activist, announced the list of 77 allies Sunday including some of the biggest names of Trump’s first administration, like Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows. Martin posted the list as a reply to his X post from May when he wrote, “No MAGA left behind.”

Among those pardoned were several Trump allies who still face state criminal charges. In Wisconsin: Kenneth Chesebro, the architect behind Trump’s fake elector scheme; Jim Troupis, an attorney who helped the Republican campaign there; and Mike Roman, who oversaw Election Day operations are on the list.

In August, a state judge refused to dismiss the case against them, and the prosecution keeps inching forward to trial. Both sides are due back in court next month for a preliminary hearing.

In Georgia, most of the people involved in a Republican plot to covertly access election machines in a rural part of the state received pardons too, including Cathy Latham, the former Coffee County GOP chair who coordinated the mission; Misty Hampton, the local elections worker who let them in and whose text messages proved it happened; and Sidney Powell, the conspiracy theorist lawyer who operated behind the scenes. They are all still facing charges at the state level.

Presidential pardons only have the power to eliminate federal prosecutions. Legal scholars watching ongoing state-level cases like those in Wisconsin and Georgia say Trump’s pardons only highlights their importance.

“You have to be able and willing as a state prosecutor to take up these kinds of cases, because the federal criminal justice system is much more unreliable,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law expert at Georgia State University, who has closely monitored the fate of fake electors in that state. “People have to know that there will be justice coming for them, even if they’re going to get a pardon. These pardons illustrate that there’s a small federal risk if you engage in a presidential coup plot and fail.”

But these federal pardons carry an extra sting in Georgia, where the state-level prosecution has all but collapsed. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis investigated fake electors and their conspirators with a special purpose grand jury, then had them indicted in 2023 — only to risk the most consequential prosecution in Georgia’s history by engaging in an affair with her subordinate, one that got her booted from her own case.

The state agency that now has custody of the case, the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, has until Friday to find a new prosecutor for the case or else a judge will dismiss it entirely. That agency did not respond to questions from NOTUS on Monday.

Marilyn Marks, an election security activist whose work led to the exposure of the scheme in Georgia, stressed the importance of keeping that state-level case alive now that no federal prosecution is possible — particularly when some of the stolen computer software could pose challenges to future elections.

“Trump may try to wipe the slate clean for his allies, but his pardons don’t erase the pending Coffee County software-theft RICO charges in Georgia,” she told NOTUS. “The stolen Dominion code still puts 2026 and beyond at risk, and it’s critical that this prosecution move forward promptly, as the public demands accountability for putting our elections at such extreme risk,”

But the president’s Sunday night maneuver actually goes beyond the 77 allies listed in the paperwork, declaring a “full, complete and unconditional pardon to all United States citizens for conduct relating to” Trump’s attempt to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.

The pardons were issued on the same day that a senior federal judge in Massachusetts who once led the court in that district, Mark L. Wolf, publicly announced his decision to retire in an essay for The Atlantic that warned about how Trump presents an “existential threat to democracy.” In it, Wolf wrote that “President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.”

The pardon list is a who’s who of MAGA loyalists, including former Justice Department high ranking official Jeffrey Clark and disgraced conservative legal scholar John Eastman. Their actions were first exposed by the House Jan. 6 committee then folded into the criminal indictment in Georgia.

None of them ever faced federal prosecutions — nor will they now. Instead, the only real consequences most of them have faced is a risk to their professional credentials. Giuliani was disbarred in New York and the District of Columbia last year. The D.C. bar recommended that Clark be disbarred this summer. Earlier this year, the California state bar upheld Eastman’s previous disbarment, stressing that “in a democracy nothing can be more fundamental than the orderly transfer of power that occurs after a fair and unimpeded electoral process as established by law.”

The question now is whether state prosecutors are willing to signal an increased appetite for criminally charging the president’s allies in the future.

Sara Tindall Ghazal, a Democrat on the five-person Georgia State Election Board, told NOTUS that she reads these pardons as a signal to MAGA that they have a license to break the law in future elections.

“It really is about 2026 and 2028. It is an acknowledgement that laws were broken on his behalf. You wouldn’t issue pardons otherwise. But he’s also signaling, ‘I’ve got your back. Democrats are not allowed to win, and we’re doubling down on that.’”

For his part, Giuliani sees his pardon as vindication. On Monday afternoon, his spokesman, Ted Goodman, demanded that the former mayor of New York get back his license to practice law “without delay.”

“Mayor Rudy Giuliani stands by his work following the 2020 presidential election,” Goodman said in a statement.