(Yep.)
Yesterday, Derek pointed out that President Trump’s November 7 blanket pardon for acts connected to the 2020 election might be broader than he anticipated. The operative language grants
a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities, participation in, or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of Presidential electors, whether or not recognized by any State or State official, in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election, as well for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 Presidential Election.
And it very explicitly “includes, but is not limited to” the individuals named on the list.
Derek notes that this language sure appears to sweep in acts of “garden variety” voter fraud in the 2020 election (my phrase, not his) — fraud wholly unconnected to the Big Lie. I think he’s right about that. And/but: just like the fraudulent electors, most of the conduct pardoned under that reading will also be subject to state prosecution, assuming the statute of limitations has not run.
There’s another category of individuals pardoned by this extraordinarily broad language, though, that I think is substantially more significant. Not 2020 fraudulent electors (who are still subject to state prosecution), not people committing voter fraud in 2020 (most of whom will still be subject to state prosecution), but election officials who ran valid elections but have faced threats of federal prosecution for doing their jobs.
The text of the proclamation grants a pardon for “conduct relating to … voting … for … any slate … of Presidential electors … in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election . . . .” And processing the votes is certainly conduct relating to voting.
As I mentioned the day the pardons were publicized, I think this language gives election officials some much-needed abillty to breathe just a bit earlier, taking sham federal prosecutions off the table for officials who ran the 2020 elections. More specifically, I think these pardons also have the effect of cutting off the most unhinged election-related portion of Project 2025: the promise to prosecute elections officials under the Ku Klux Klan Act for correctly interpreting state law in order to enfranchise eligible voters.
As Derek implies with his blog title (“accidentally”), I don’t think any of this was intended. But I think it may offer a tiny incremental reason for Thanksgiving this holiday.