The Pardon of the Companions - Trump's Dangerous Game with History

Washington - It was an act of breathtaking symbolism and political audacity at the same time: Donald Trump has, on the night before Monday, pardoned those men and women who, five years ago, had tried to revise his election defeat - and in doing so attacked the very foundation of American democracy. Among the names now released by the Justice Department are Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal lawyer and former mayor of New York, his then chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorney Sidney Powell, law professor John Eastman, and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. They were all central figures in a conspiracy that brought the country to the brink ...

The official statement came through the government channel of Ed Martin, the new pardon attorney of the United States. It bore Trump’s signature and the seal of the White House - with the wording that sounds like a parody of Republican rhetoric: “a full, complete, and unconditional pardon.” The text speaks of a “grave national injustice” that should be healed by this decision and praises the measure as “part of the process of national reconciliation.” But in truth, it is the opposite - a rehabilitation of those who deliberately tried to prevent the democratic transfer of power.

Giuliani, once celebrated as “America’s Mayor,” had long become a symbol of moral decay in Trump’s orbit. After the 2020 election year, he moved from court to court, spreading unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud. He lost his law license, his fortune, and his credibility. A jury ordered him to pay 148 million dollars in damages for having ruined two election workers in Georgia through lies and harassment. Now, thanks to Trump, he is considered absolved of all acts that were never charged at the federal level but long since proven by facts.

John Eastman, once regarded as a serious constitutional scholar as a law professor at Chapman University, is also among the beneficiaries of this mercy. He was the architect of the infamous memo that outlined how Vice President Mike Pence could stop the certification of the election result - a plan that led directly to the storming of the Capitol. Eastman, disciplined and professionally ruined, now receives a retrospective absolution. So does Sidney Powell, whose absurd theories about Venezuelan software and “dead voters” drove the discourse into the grotesque.

Then there are the so-called “fake electors,” Republican party officials who submitted forged electoral certificates in several states to retroactively declare Trump the winner. Many of them are indicted in ongoing state cases, some have already been acquitted, others are awaiting trial. But the White House has long decided their question of guilt - not through law, but through power.

Mark Meadows, who as chief of staff in January 2021 was supposed to keep track of Trump’s chaotic orders, is also pardoned. Investigations were underway against him in Georgia and Michigan, where he was accused of actively participating in the organization of the false elector slates. The statement says that the prosecution of these individuals constitutes “an attack on the constitutional order and on the American people.” A formulation that could hardly be more cynical in its distortion.

Remarkably, Trump himself is explicitly excluded in the proclamation. It does not apply to him. The Justice Department, the statement says, respects the constitutional distinction between president and citizen. And yet the message is clear: those who sacrificed themselves for Trump are rewarded. Those who opposed him remain outside. The fact that none of those pardoned were ever charged at the federal level for their role in the election overturn does nothing to lessen the political weight of this decision. It is not legally necessary, but symbolic. It seeks to cement a narrative: that of an alleged “witch hunt” against patriots who only wanted to “save their country.” In doing so, Trump continues what he has pursued since taking office in 2025 - the reversal of guilt and innocence, of perpetrator and victim.

Jeffrey Clark, who once tried to turn the Justice Department into an instrument of election manipulation, now also receives the presidential pardon. At the time, he had drafted a letter urging election officials in Georgia to “review” the result and overturn Biden’s victory. Even William Barr, Trump’s then attorney general, had called him dangerous and untenable. Now, however, Trump writes him into the canon of his martyrs.

The White House has so far refused any comment. Not a word about the legal basis, not a word about the political intent. But in Washington, the message is read between the lines: loyalty to Trump is stronger than any law, stronger than any memory of the violence of January 6, 2021. It is the final rehabilitation of a political project built on lies, fear, and the will to power. That Trump himself, after his return to office, can no longer be prosecuted for his own attempts to overturn the 2020 election is a legal consequence of his reelection. The indictment by special counsel Jack Smith was dropped after Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris - a requirement of the Justice Department, which may not prosecute a sitting president. And thus the circle closes: the man once accused of bending the law now stands above it.

The pardons of Sunday night are more than an act of clemency. They are a political manifesto. They say: truth is what the president says, and justice is what serves him. In a democracy, that is a dangerous message - and in America, in the year 2025, perhaps the final step into an era in which the law once again becomes a tool of power.