A Tangle of Legal Battles — And Mixed Fates
The pardons arrive after years of fractured legal outcomes for Trump’s legal inner circle. New York disbarred Giuliani and Chesebro over ethics violations. California stripped Eastman of his right to practice law and recommended full disbarment, while Texas declined to discipline Powell.
Meanwhile, Chesebro, who pled guilty to filing false documents in Georgia, faces suspension across multiple states, and Ellis avoided prosecution in Arizona by agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors.
The Georgia election interference case — once a cornerstone of Trump’s legal peril — has faltered since Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified from the case. In Michigan, a federal judge dismissed criminal claims against alleged “fake electors” in September.
White House: ‘Great Americans Persecuted for Democracy’
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt praised the pardoned individuals as “great Americans” persecuted by the Biden administration for defending democratic principles.
“They were put through hell for questioning an election — which is the very cornerstone of democracy,” Leavitt said, calling their prosecution “something that happens in communist Venezuela.”
A separate White House official echoed that states lack the jurisdiction to prosecute federal election conduct, referencing the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon certification dispute in Hawaii, where alternate electors were submitted but never prosecuted.
“The alternate electors for Kennedy did not face prosecution,” the spokesperson noted. “Neither should these Americans.”
