Pardons & Commutations

Peters, the former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder in Colorado, was convicted in August 2024 on 7 of 10 counts following her unauthorized breach of voting machine security — an act prosecutors characterized as deliberate election subversion driven by conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. She ordered surveillance cameras monitoring voting machines to be turned off in May 2021, then allowed an individual using a fake employee badge to access and copy voting machine hard drives and record a software update. The copied data was subsequently published online by election conspiracy theorists. Felony convictions included three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit the same, criminal impersonation, and identity theft. Misdemeanor convictions included first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failing to comply with Colorado Secretary of State regulations. At sentencing, the judge stated: "Your lies are well documented... You are no hero. You're a charlatan."

Rudolph William Louis Giuliani served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989 — where he became nationally known for prosecuting the heads of New York's five Mafia families under RICO statutes, dismantling the "Pizza Connection" international heroin ring, and bringing cases against Wall Street figures including Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken — before serving two terms as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001, earning widespread public admiration for his response to the September 11 attacks. He became Trump's personal attorney in 2018 and, following the November 2020 election, became the most prominent public face of the campaign to overturn the result. In that role, Giuliani filed or directed dozens of legal challenges in state and federal courts across Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia, all of which were dismissed or rejected for lack of evidence. He appeared at the now-infamous November 7, 2020 press conference outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia and at an RNC headquarters press conference on November 19, 2020, where he publicly alleged a "centralized" nationwide voter fraud conspiracy without supporting evidence. He also appeared before legislative committees in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia making false claims of election fraud and urging lawmakers to reject or replace certified electors. Georgia: In August 2023, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis secured a 41-count RICO indictment against 19 defendants including Trump. Giuliani was charged with 13 counts: violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, conspiracy to commit false statements and writings, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, and related offenses. The indictment alleged he pressured Georgia state lawmakers to appoint a false slate of presidential electors, made knowingly false statements about election fraud at public legislative hearings in Georgia, and engaged in similar conduct in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona. He surrendered at Fulton County Jail on August 23, 2023, was processed and released on a $150,000 bond, and pleaded not guilty. Arizona: In April 2024, an Arizona grand jury indicted 18 Trump allies — including Giuliani — on charges of fraud, forgery, and conspiracy in connection with the fake elector scheme. The indictment alleged Giuliani personally pressured Arizona legislators and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to change the state's certified result, presided over events in Phoenix where he falsely claimed election officials had made no effort to verify the presidential vote, and coordinated the signing of certificates by 11 Trump supporters at Arizona GOP headquarters who falsely claimed to be the state's official presidential electors, despite Joe Biden having won Arizona by 10,457 votes. Giuliani pleaded not guilty in May 2024. Civil liability: In a separate federal civil proceeding, Giuliani was found liable in December 2023 for defaming Fulton County election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, whom he had repeatedly and falsely accused — from November 2020 through 2021 — of inserting fraudulent USB drives, stuffing ballot boxes, and manipulating vote totals. A federal jury awarded $148,169,000 in damages: $75 million in punitive damages, approximately $33 million in defamation damages, and $40 million for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Giuliani filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2023; the case was dismissed by a judge in 2024 for repeated failure to comply with court orders and disclose income. He was subsequently ordered to surrender his Manhattan apartment, a collectible Mercedes-Benz, and luxury watches. A settlement with Freeman and Moss was reached in January 2025 and the judgment was satisfied in February 2025. Bar discipline: The New York Court of Appeals permanently disbarred Giuliani in 2024, finding he had repeatedly and knowingly made false statements about the 2020 election in legal proceedings and public forums. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals followed with a reciprocal permanent disbarment.

John Eastman earned a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1996–97, and joined Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law in 1999 — serving as dean from 2007 to 2010 and holding the Henry Salvatori Professorship in Law. He simultaneously founded the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute, and was chairman of the Federalist Society's Federalism and Separation of Powers practice group. He was regarded as one of the leading conservative constitutional law scholars in the country before joining Trump's post-election legal effort. After the November 2020 election, Eastman became the principal legal architect of the theory that Vice President Mike Pence possessed constitutional authority to unilaterally refuse to count or delay the certification of electoral votes on the day Congress met to certify the result. He produced two memos — the documents became known collectively as the "Eastman Memos" — setting out his argument. The first, dated December 23, 2020, was a two-page summary proposing that Pence reject or suspend the counting of electoral votes from seven states Biden had won: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. A subsequent six-page memo elaborated a step-by-step process: Pence would announce that competing slates of Trump electors existed in those states; claim he could not select between the competing slates; set aside the Biden electoral votes; close the count declaring Trump the winner with 232 to 222 electoral votes; and if the result was challenged in Congress, allow the House to decide the presidency. Eastman acknowledged in the memos that the plan would violate the Electoral Count Act, which he argued should be disregarded as unconstitutional. In the days immediately before the certification, Pence's counsel Greg Jacob documented that Eastman privately conceded the scheme would not survive judicial review and would violate the Act — yet continued pressing it. Multiple White House and Justice Department officials told Eastman and Trump the plan was legally baseless, describing it variously as "crazy," "nuts," and likely to "cause riots in the streets." Eastman participated directly in Pence pressure meetings and helped coordinate the fake elector scheme across multiple states, by which Trump supporters signed certificates falsely claiming to be each state's legitimate presidential electors and transmitted those documents to Congress and the National Archives. He spoke at the Ellipse rally on the morning of the certification, repeating false claims of election fraud to the crowd before it marched on Congress. Chapman University announced his retirement on January 13, 2021, following a letter signed by more than 140 faculty members demanding his removal. In August 2023, Eastman was among the 19 defendants indicted in Fulton County, Georgia on a sweeping RICO indictment. He faced nine counts: two violations of Georgia's RICO statute, two counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings, conspiracy to commit the filing of false documents, two counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, conspiracy to commit impersonation of a public officer, and solicitation of a public officer to violate their oath. The indictment focused specifically on his role in orchestrating the fake elector scheme and his legal pressure campaign on Pence. He surrendered at Fulton County Jail on August 22, 2023, and pleaded not guilty. In December 2022, the House Select Committee had referred him to the Department of Justice for prosecution on charges of obstructing the congressional certification and conspiracy to defraud the United States; no federal indictment followed. The California State Bar's Office of Chief Trial Counsel filed 11 disciplinary charges against Eastman. In March 2024, State Bar Court Hearing Judge Yvette Roland issued a 128-page ruling finding him culpable on 10 of the 11 charges and recommending disbarment, citing conduct that "transgressed ethical limits by advocating, participating in and pursuing a strategy to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election that lacked evidentiary or legal support" and specifically noting his "lack of remorse and accountability." The State Bar Court Review Department affirmed the recommendation in June 2025. The California Supreme Court permanently disbarred Eastman on April 15, 2026, ordering him to pay $5,000 to the Client Security Fund plus costs. Eastman announced his intention to appeal to the United States Supreme Court, arguing the disbarment violated his First Amendment rights.

Sidney Powell spent a decade as one of the youngest federal prosecutors in the country, serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Texas and Virginia from the late 1970s, before entering private practice in Dallas in 1993. Over more than twenty years in private practice she led more than 500 federal appeals, became known for cases involving corporate fraud, and authored Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice (2014). She entered Trump's orbit in 2020 through her work advocating for disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn, and in the weeks after the November 2020 election became the most prominent legal architect of the claim that voting machines had been systematically manipulated to steal the election. In November 2020, Powell appeared alongside Giuliani at the November 19 RNC press conference and publicly vowed to "release the Kraken" — a reference to her planned lawsuits in battleground states. She filed sweeping federal suits in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona alleging that Dominion Voting Systems machines had been programmed to switch votes, that the software had been created at Hugo Chávez's direction to rig elections in Venezuela, and that a coordinated multi-state fraud had produced Biden's victory. The suits were widely derided for factual errors, misspelled plaintiff names, named locations that did not exist, and contained no credible evidentiary support; all were dismissed. The Trump campaign publicly distanced itself from Powell in late November 2020, though she continued her campaign independently. Through her nonprofit organization Defending the Republic, she raised more than $16 million in the months following the election, part of which was used to fund forensic access to voting equipment across multiple states. The most consequential of these operations was the Coffee County, Georgia breach. On January 7, 2021 — the day after rioters stormed Congress — employees of SullivanStrickler LLC, an Atlanta-based data company retained by Powell's organization for approximately $26,000, gained access to the Coffee County elections office with the assistance of Coffee County GOP Chair Cathy Latham (herself one of the fake electors appointed to falsely certify Trump's victory), elections supervisor Misty Hampton, and a board member. The team copied hard drives and accessed the proprietary Dominion voting system software. SullivanStrickler's chief operating officer subsequently emailed Powell to confirm: "Everything went smoothly yesterday with the Coffee County collection." In August 2023, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis included Powell among the 19 defendants in the sweeping RICO indictment against Trump and his allies. Powell faced seven felony counts: one count of violating Georgia's RICO statute and six counts tied specifically to her role in orchestrating the Coffee County voting system breach and the broader conspiracy to interfere with Georgia's election administration. In a separate federal civil proceeding, Dominion Voting Systems sued Powell for $1.3 billion in January 2021, alleging she had knowingly spread false claims about the company to defraud Trump supporters into donations; Powell's lawyers argued in court that "no reasonable person" would have taken her claims as statements of fact. The case was settled confidentially. On October 19, 2023 — less than a week before she was due to stand trial — Powell entered a surprise guilty plea in Fulton County Superior Court to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties. As part of the plea agreement she agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, provide truthful testimony at any future hearings or trials involving co-defendants (including Trump), and record a statement for prosecutors.

Mark Meadows served as a Republican congressman from North Carolina's 11th district from 2013 to 2020, including a stint as chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. On March 30, 2020, Trump appointed him as his fourth — and final — White House Chief of Staff, a post he held through Inauguration Day 2021. In the weeks following the November 2020 election, Meadows became a central figure in efforts to overturn the result. According to the Arizona indictment, he privately told a White House staff member in early November 2020 that Trump had lost. Nonetheless, Meadows coordinated and facilitated numerous schemes to reverse Biden's victory. His role in the January 2, 2021 phone call in which Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes" — the exact margin needed to flip the state — was among the most consequential. During the call, Raffensperger's aide repeatedly texted Meadows urging him to end it. In August 2023, a Fulton County grand jury indicted Meadows on two counts under the Georgia RICO Act: violation of the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer. The indictment named him as a co-defendant alongside Trump and 17 others, listing his role in the Raffensperger call as a key overt act in the broader conspiracy to subvert Georgia's election. Meadows pleaded not guilty. In April 2024, a Maricopa County, Arizona grand jury indicted 18 individuals — including Meadows — for their alleged roles in the fake electors scheme. Meadows faces nine felony counts for his alleged coordination of efforts to submit fraudulent certificates naming Trump supporters as Arizona's Electoral College electors, despite Biden having won the state by more than 10,000 votes. Meadows pleaded not guilty in June 2024 and also sought to have the Arizona case removed to federal court, arguing his actions fell within his duties as a federal official. Meadows made parallel removal arguments in Georgia. He contended the federal officer removal statute gave him the right to move his state prosecution to federal court. U.S. District Judge Steve Jones rejected that argument in September 2023, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the denial in December 2023, ruling that the statute did not apply to former federal officers and that the conduct alleged fell outside any official duties. The Supreme Court declined to hear Meadows's appeal in November 2024. Meadows was also held in contempt of Congress. After initially providing limited cooperation to the House Select Committee, he defied a subpoena, refusing to testify or produce documents. The House voted 222 to 208 in December 2021 to hold him in criminal contempt and referred the matter to the Department of Justice. The committee's investigation also surfaced damaging testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, Meadows's own top aide, who described him as having warned her on January 2, 2021 that things might get "real, real bad" on the 6th. Hutchinson testified that Meadows burned documents in his White House fireplace after meeting with Representative Scott Perry, and that Meadows relayed Trump's apparent approval of chants calling for Vice President Pence to be hanged.