What a Preemptive Pardon Covers

Late Sunday, while most eyes were on the Senate’s shutdown negotiations, the Trump administration was busy rewriting the history of the 2020 election.

Just before midnight, a Justice Department lawyer posted a list on X of dozens of the president’s top allies and former aides who’d received pardons related to their efforts to overturn that election.

Among them are Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani; Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows; and Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor who tried to overturn election results in key swing states and spread false claims of widespread voting machine fraud.

What do these pardons do? And how is the president using the Justice Department to shield those closest to him from future legal consequences?

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