Tangle - Trump's 2020 election pardons.

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

On Monday, U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin announced that President Donald Trump had pardoned several top aides and advisers from his first administration, as well as dozens of people involved in his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election. Those receiving pardons include President Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, adviser Boris Epshteyn, and attorneys Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, and Sidney Powell. None of the recipients has been charged with a federal crime, but the pardon will protect them from future prosecution related to the 2020 election (though they can still be prosecuted at the state level). Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What reform to presidential clemency would you support? Let us know.Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Will Kaback and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. I am your host today, senior editor Will Kayback, and today we are going to be covering President Trump's pardons. We've done a few issues on pardons issued by the president. Today we're going to be focusing on the pardons that he issued on Monday for members of his first administration, some of his attorneys in that administration, and other Republican allies who are involved in his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. So I will pass it over to John in a second to get into the background. on the topic and what the left and right are saying about it. But before we do that,

a quick reminder. On Friday, we published a piece written by Isaac about the Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, interview. And in case you're not familiar, Fuentes is a far-right commentator who is known for regularly espousing anti-Semitic and white nationalist views. And the interview set off a wave of discourse, particularly on the right and within the right. Some of those people criticized Carlson's interview style, others pondered the future. of MAGA post-Trump and where Fuentes fits into that. But something was more interesting to Isaac than either of those debates. And that was Fuentes' origin story, according to him how he described it in the interview with Carlson.

So in that addition, Isaac got into what he learned and how he thinks we can prevent more people like Fuentes from emerging in the future. If you're a member, you can listen to that full piece on the podcast, and we encourage you to do so if you haven't already. If you're interested in checking it out, consider leveling up. your membership so you can get the full thing. All right, I'm going to pass it over to John now to get us into today's topic, and then I will be back to read my take. John, over to you. Thanks, Will, and welcome, everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, the House of

Representatives will vote today on a funding package to end the government shutdown after 42 days. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he expects the bill to pass this evening. Number two, President Donald Trump said he is considering a lawsuit against the BBC for alleged election interference after it was revealed that one of the broadcaster's programs edited a portion of Trump's speech near the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to omit a line where he urged peaceful protests. The BBC's Director General and News CEO resigned on Sunday, and Chairman Samir Shah apologized for an error in judgment. Number three, the Supreme Court agreed to take up a challenge by the Republican National Committee

and other groups to a Mississippi law that allows mail and ballots to be counted if they arrive within five days of election day. Number four, a judge in Utah rejected a new map of the state's congressional districts drawn by the Republican state legislature and accepted an alternate map submitted by a coalition of groups more favorable to Democrats. Utah Lieutenant Governor Deirdre Henderson said she would follow the judge's order and implement the new map for the 26 midterm primaries and elections. And number five, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he will will swear in Representative-elect Adelaideh Grijalva, the Democrat from Arizona, on Wednesday. Grijava won the special election to replace her father, Representative Raul Grijalva, who died in office in March.

50 days have passed since her election victory. President Trump has pardoned some of his most loyal allies from the 2020 era. accused of trying to aid in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results when he lost the White House to Joe Biden on the pardon list. Former Trump attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, as well as the president's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows. In all the Justice Department says that 77 people received what they're describing as, quote, full and complete, full, complete and unconditional pardons related to all of this. On Monday, U.S. pardon attorney Ed Martin announced that President Donald Trump had

pardoned several top aides and advisors from his administration, as well as dozens of people involved in his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election. Those receiving pardons include President Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, advisor Boris Epstein, and attorneys Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesboro, and Sidney Powell. None of the recipients had been charged with a federal crime, but the pardon will protect them from future prosecution related to the 2020 election, though they can still be prosecuted at the state level. For context, after news outlets declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election, Giuliani and Powell publicly alleged widespread fraud on Trump's behalf

and pressured key states that Biden won to reject their results. Meadows set up meetings with the White House and state officials as the president sought to pressure them not to certify their elections, and Eastman and Chesboro devised a plan for Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the election on January 6, 2021. The pardon does not protect any of those named from punishment for state-level crimes. Giuliani, Meadows, Eastman, Powell, and 14 others were indicted alongside Trump in Georgia in 2003 for alleged election interference. Powell pleaded guilty in that case and was sentenced to

six years probation and a fine. Juliani was also charged in Arizona for his alleged efforts to overturn the state's results and in a separate case was ordered to pay $148 million to Georgia poll workers he was found to have defamed. The language of President Trump's pardon Proclamation is broad, applying 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 as for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities

in the 2020 presidential election. Furthermore, the pardon states it is not limited to those named in the document, though the White House has not offered further clarity on whom else it could refer to. The list also explicitly excludes Trump from the pardon. Press Secretary Caroline Levitt defended the pardon saying, getting prosecuted for challenging results is something that happens in communist Venezuela, not in the United States of America, and President Trump is putting an end to the Biden regime's communist tactics once and for all. Some legal experts criticize the pardons, suggesting they function as a form of corruption. The pardon process as a method for granting executive grace for deserving criminal defendants

has been replaced by a pay-to-play system that is a thinly disguised form of bribery, former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich said. Today, we'll share perspectives from the left and the right on the pardons, and then senior editor Will Kayback will give his take. We'll be right back after. this quick break. Heart health isn't as trendy as raw milk or cold plunges like you see online, but it's arguably the most important health conversation Americans aren't having enough. That's why today I want to share with you one of our sponsors, Human Supplements.

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Some say the pardons are symbolic but troubling. Others suggest Trump is sending a message. to those who might help him take legal dubious actions in the future. In MSNBC, Hayes Brown wrote, Trump's latest pardons aimed to make his fake elector scheme legal. While some listed were unnamed co-conspirators in the now-dismissed federal case against Trump, the criminal allegations filed against Giuliani,

Meadows, and others named in the pardon were all under state law outside the purview of the White House's reach. Trump could no more pardon them for those alleged crimes than he could pardon a ham sandwich, Brown said. But Trump appears to be in pursuit of two worrisome goals. The memo attributed to Martin argues that the states have no power to police the electoral college and its members. Thus, the first goal appears to undercut the remaining state cases that are still active

and give those defendants an argument for any conviction to be overturned on appeal. More troublingly, the pardon acts as an invitation for those who took part in the attempted Otagulpate to be returned into the fold. Those who have been disbarred, like Giuliani and former Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark have already said that this decision should restore their ability to practice law, Brown wrote. And the pardon is a green light for those people who have actively worked to subvert the 2020 election but have not been charged to replicate their campaign against democracy in the future. In Mother Jones, Dan Friedman called the clemency, fake pardons for fake

electors. The pardons, which on Monday afternoon had not appeared on the White House page listing Trump's clemency grants, are symbolic. They are part of Trump's larger effort to downplay his attempt to subvert the 2020 election and his responsibility for the January 6th, 2021 attack on Congress, Friedman wrote. None of the people he pardoned on Sunday faced federal charges, but many on the list have been charged with state crimes related to the fake elector scheme. The president has broad clemency power over federal crimes, but has no authority over state charges.

Pardon attorney Ed Martin considered recommending that Trump pardon John F. Kennedy supporters who in 1960 signed paperwork saying that they were Hawaii's presidential electors when a recount left the actual winner of the state uncertain. Kennedy won Hawaii, and those electors were accepted as to state's legitimate slate and never accused of crimes. They are also dead, Friedman said. But pardoning them, the person familiar with the plan said, would have been a gesture aimed at boosting Trump supporters' claims that 2020 fake electors did nothing wrong, but it may have been a step too far, even for Trump. In CNN, Aaron Blake said Trump's pardons aren't just political. More importantly, they're transactional.

So much of the coverage of President Donald Trump's pardons is focused on how political they are. They are certainly political, extraordinarily so. But Trump's latest batch of pardons reinforces, that's only half the story. The more ominous trend is not just that he's pardoning political allies. It's that he's pardoning allies in very transactional ways, Blake wrote. After previously dangling pardons over allies involved in sensitive investigations involving Trump himself and later delivering those pardons, he's now pardoned oodles of people who took a legal or legal dubious action on his behalf. Trump is creating a permission structure in which people will

credibly think that they can't be held accountable in federal court as long as what they're doing benefits Trump. He's been cultivating this for a long time, but he seems to be getting more brazen about it, Blake said. What message does it send to other people who might go to remarkable lengths to help Trump carry out his agenda, to participate in legally dubious administration actions, things like boat strikes in the Caribbean, to carry out his deportation agenda in rather brutal ways? All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right defend the pardons, saying President Trump is right to protect allies who have been unjustly targeted. Some criticize the pardons, but say President Biden set the precedent for them.

Others suggest the pardons won't mean much in the long run. In the Federalist, Margo Cleveland said the pardons seek to end an injustice. U.S. pardon attorney Martin's memorandum to President Trump stresses that the prosecutions are attempts by partisan state actors to shoehorn fanciful and concocted state law violations onto what were clearly federal constitutional obligations of the 2020 Trump campaign, Cleveland wrote. Under the memorandum's reasoning, then, because the states are prosecuting the 2020 Trump electors and those connected to the decision to use alternate electors for exercising a solely federal function, the president of the United States can pardon them for their supposed

state law crimes. This novel theory seeks to sidestep the normal limitation on the president's pardon authority. While there is no trial eminence, for some five years, the electors and those working with them on behalf of Trump have had their lives and livelihoods uprooted due to Democrats' lawfare. They have also faced a huge financial and emotional toll. The president's pardon seek to end the injustice, Cleveland said. Whether the courts agree that the president's pardon authority extends to crimes allegedly committed in performing duties under Article 2 remains to be seen. But the move forces Democrats to own the weaponization they launched in 2020. In National Review, Noah Rothman argued Biden set the stage for today's pardon disgrace. The maneuver does not seem to

have moved the activist left to outrage. Perhaps they have only so much bandwidth for Iyer, given that they are consumed with hostility toward Democrats for, as it appears, allowing the government to reopen, Rothman wrote. Or maybe the muted reaction to Trump's decision to pardon the erstwhile members of his inner circle before they were even charged with crime represents a prudent effort to avoid having to once again condemn Joe Biden. After all, it's not like Trump invented preemptive pardons. Biden's pardons of his family members, January 6th committee participants and public officials like Anthony Fauci, all in the absence of any charge and seemingly only to promote the political narrative that the incoming Trump administration was salivating

over the opportunity to persecute them, set the stage for today's disgrace, Rothman said. The proclamation only presents us with more evidence that the political party that forges new weapons for itself to wield in the ongoing culture war will see those instruments turned against it soon enough. In hot air, Ed Morrissey explored the timing of the pardons. The timing on this pardon announcement seems interesting. With the left about to conduct unending struggle sessions over the collapse of the Schumer shutdown, what better moment than to clean up what remains of a five-year-old mess, Morrissey wrote.

While it doesn't impact the state-level investigations, those are mainly more about now as well. The collapse of the Fony Willis RICO prosecution over Willis's personal corruption has that case in what appears to be perpetual limbo. The statute of limitations in Georgia is five years, and while this may or may not apply yet in that case, that deadline is fast approaching for any of the alleged overt acts in Willis's indictment. One does wonder whether Trump and his team worried whether presidential pardons might incentivize hostile blue states to attempt prosecution on state charges in retaliation, and also before the statutes of limitations become too close to foreclose on the possibility, Morrissey said. As of 9.45 Eastern this morning,

Trump has not posted a word about these pardons. The announcement through Ed Martin suggests a lower profile release. It's a smart strategy by Trump and his team, if they stick with it. All right, let's head over to Will for his take. Hey, everyone. This is Senior Editor Will Kayback, and I'm jumping in here to read my take. President Trump's latest pardons are yet another obvious abuse of presidential clemency powers this year. Trump and his allies' actions after the 2020 election are well documented, including entangle. But to quickly recap here, the president sought to overturn the result through multiple avenues, with the help of the people that he just pardoned.

One route was to have Republicans in Biden won swing. states propose alternate electors to certify Trump as the winner of their state's elections, a scheme devised by attorneys Kenneth Chesabro and John Eastman. With these elections contested, Chesabro and Eastman hoped that Vice President Mike Pence would refuse to accept the results in those states and give Trump a path to stay in office when Congress met to certify the election on January 6th, which, of course, Pence did not do. Simultaneously, attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell spearheaded Trump's legal efforts to prove widespread election fraud. They alleged vote rigging by voting systems companies,

Dominion Voting Systems, and Smartmatic. They alleged vote manipulation by poll workers, and they alleged miscounting of provisional ballots by election officials in swing states like Pennsylvania, just to name a few of those accusations. And other Trump administration figures, like Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, were part of the effort to pressure Georgia in particular

to overturn Biden's victory in the state. Now, we've tackled the key election fraud claims and the attempts to challenge the election result in years past, and I recommend revisiting those additions for a deeper dive into this backstory and why those efforts failed. And you can find that by going to reetangle.com and searching for topics related to the 2020 election.

For today, though, the important new detail is that Trump's latest pardons protect most of the key players involved in this effort from future federal prosecution. Will these pardons have any immediate consequences? Frankly, it doesn't seem like it. Giuliani, Powell, Eastman, Clark, and two others pardoned were identified as co-conspirators in special counsel

Jack Smith's 2020 election interference case against Trump, but that case was dropped, and there's no way that the Justice Department would bring a new case against them during Trump's presidency. And even if a future Democratic president wanted to reopen their cases, their alleged crimes would be nearly a decade old at that point. point, and either outside the five-year statute of limitations or the window of public interest. Now, as you heard from what the right and left are saying, MSNBC's Hayes Brown and the Federalists

Margot Cleveland suggested that Trump may be attempting to use a novel legal theory to undercut the ongoing state-level cases against Giuliani and others, like the one in Georgia. But those cases have either been resolved or are on life support. And regardless, Trump hasn't even claimed that he has the power to dismiss. state prosecutions. In fact, Trump hasn't remarked on these pardons at all yet. So if they're not preventing possible litigation and they're not resolving state-level issues, why the pardons? Ultimately, I think the simplest explanation is also the most likely. Trump believes that the 2020 election was stolen from him and he wants to use his return to the presidency to write some of those perceived

wrongs. A proclamation clearing his associates of wrongdoing and declaring itself an end to a, quote, grave national injustice serves that purpose. Regardless of Trump's motivations, though, these pardons are another extension of the president's expansive use of clemency power. His mass pardons and commutations for January 6 rioters were more impactful than these pardons since they upended ongoing cases and cleared the records of people who had already been convicted. And as of June, at least 10 of those pardoned have already been re-arrested or charged and sentenced for other crimes. But the effect of this most recent decision will be felt for the remainder of Trump's term,

and perhaps longer. It's a message to those around him that if you stick by me, I'll make sure you're protected. And as objectionable as I find these pardons and this message that they sent, I also agree with writers like National Reviews Noah Rothman that President Biden helped accelerate this moment of expansive usage of pardon power. Biden's pardons of his son, Anthony Fauci, Mark Millie, and the members of the House Jan 6 committee were not proportionally equal to Trump pardoning 1,500 January 6 rioters. But when a president appoints himself the arbiter of who is a victim of a political witch hunt,

as Biden did with Hunter, Fauci, Millie, and the others, and decides who gets to be immune from any future prosecution, he swings the door wide open for a future president to do the same on their own terms. In many ways, this issue reminds me of the gerrymandering fight currently playing out across the country. Each side can point to examples of the other violating norms or taking action that requires a tit-for-tat response, and as long as we remain mired in that mindset,

we'll be stuck in a race to the bottom. Maybe, as Isaac has suggested with gerrymandering, we'll reach a point where presidents are so widely abusing clemency power that a bipartisan consensus forms on the need to reign it. However, that will require a constitutional amendment, which obviously seems far-fetched in our hyper-polarized politics. So the immediate solution to me is a recommitment to the past idea of pardons as an act of compassion instead of a tool for political favors. Now, that decision ultimately lies with the president, but as citizens, I think we can nudge the national conversation in that direction by calling out the abuse of pardon power every time and dismissing the temptation to justify the other side's perversions with more of our own.

We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that's it for my take. Now let's get into today's reader question. Today's question comes from Lynn in Seattle, Washington. She asks, I live in Seattle, and on October 25th, columnist Danny Westnete had an article after an interview with Representative Adam Smith, who is a Democrat representing Washington. Here's a small quote from it.

The House hasn't met at all for 35 straight days as of Friday. The legislative blackout long predates the government shutdown. And for the past 100 days, the House has been in session for only 17 of them. That's counting all committee meetings and public hearings, which are not being held. I was frankly pretty shocked by this, and I was wondering if the facts are correct, and if so, why this isn't something that is more widely pointed out in the media. It seems to represent a complete lack of any accountability from the House of Representatives and shows how completely they have just given up on even trying to have a voice in the

country. Seems like this is something that could be tracked and publicized regularly to keep voters informed. Here's our response. That quote from West Neat was accurate when it was published on October 25th, but a few things softened the outrageousness of that statistic. First, the time span covers the month of August, during which Congress was in its annual recess. Second, congressional committees met for seven days over the span of the next two weeks after that was published. And committees don't meet on weekdays and usually don't meet on Fridays. So it was really seven out of eight possible days. The workings of Congress are recorded and made public, and you can track legislative sessions, votes, and committee meetings online.

Perhaps the best site to see all of that in one place is GovTrack.us, G-O-V-T-R-A-C-K-D-U-S, where you can see a map of committee meetings. Just this past Tuesday, on Veterans Day, the House Rules Committee convened, and you can read the minutes and watch the recording of the meeting online as well. And remember, as we reported in our video covering the day in the life of a U.S. representative, members of Congress do a lot more than just meet for official business and committee. or on the floor. And legislators having more time to spend meeting with constituents in their districts is arguably a very good thing. So while West Neat was correct, it was also a pretty auspicious time to make that observation. And official business is only part of a legislator's job. Now, that doesn't mean that Congress is busying itself too much with official duties. Historically, members of Congress have been on Capitol Hill for official business for about

60% of weekdays. And this Congress has only met for 87 voting days through October, the lowest record for any year outside of the pandemic hampered 2021 Congress. All right, that's it for today's reader question. I'm going to pass it back over to John for Under the Radar and the rest of today's sections. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day. Thanks, Will. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it will no longer require hormone therapies for menopause to have a warning label, known as a black box warning, about risks associated with the treatment. These medications replace estrogen and progesterone, hormones that decline during menopause,

to treat symptoms like hot flashes, mood swings, and sleeping difficulties. The warning is the product of a 2002 clinical trial that detected increased risks of breast cancer, heart attack, and stroke in women receiving hormone therapy. But the results have since come under scrutiny due to questions about the formulation of the treatment studied and the age of the trial's participants. Our big concern about the black box warning is that a lot of women are excited about walking out of the office and then go home and read the black box and never start it because they get scared, Dr. Marjavei Cole, an obstetrician gynecologist at Duke University

School of Medicine, said. NBC News has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. President Trump's pardon proclamation listed 77 people. Prior to Monday's announcement, Trump had issued 66 pardons in his second term, excluding his pardons related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots. Prior to Monday's announcement, the highest number of pardons issued in one day by Trump in his second term was 24, excluding his January 6 pardons.

Trump has issued approximately 1,500 pardons for people charged with certain offenses relating to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2020. Former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers for defaming them in accusations levied about the integrity of the state's 2020 election results. And former Trump attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts in Georgia related to her efforts to overturn the state's 2020 election results. And last but not least, our have a nice day story.

In Staten Island, New York, a community is stepping up to support one. one of its most remarkable residents. Andy lives with cerebral palsy, but still pushes a candy cart on Highland Boulevard every day, rain or shine, selling sweets and greeting commuters with unfailing cheer. Jennifer Rumaro, whose late brother also had cerebral palsy, was so inspired by Andy's constant positivity that she set up a GoFundMe page to support his business. This isn't charity, Jennifer wrote on her page. It's an investment in someone who is truly spectacular. The drive has already exceeded its initial goal of raising $30,000.

Sunny Skies has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to retangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing all. Have a great day, y'all.

Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wohl. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saw, Lindsay Canuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com. You know,