The president also pardoned 61 other election-related allies, including former New York City Mayor and Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, and dozens more – 77 individuals in total.

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These are “full, complete, and unconditional” pardons and the language Trump used includes pardoning “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…as well for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 presidential election.”

A long time coming.

For many non-Democrats, it feels like the justice system is finally catching up to reality including the electors themselves who say that they were citizens acting within a disputed and unsettled moment in history. The cases against them had already collapsed in Michigan courts after Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel spent a lot of her time and energy targeting the electors, mostly elderly Republicans.

In September, a judge in Michigan found no criminal intent and dismissed Nessel’s cases. The pardons simply seal a chapter that many say should never have turned into felony mugshots in the first place.

The Michigan story was never a “crime” story.

From the beginning, Michigan’s electors argued they were following legal advice and preserving Trump’s legal options in case ongoing challenges succeeded. Whether one liked it or not, this is not unprecedented in American elections (see Hawaii 1960). But in 2023, AG Nessel decided to make what the Republican electors did a headline. The charges eventually fizzled when judges couldn’t find intent, coordination, or anything resembling a criminal plot.

The pardons don’t rewrite history. They just close the book on this partisan chapter.

Critics will howl about “accountability” because of Trump’s pardons but accountability requires an actual crime. What the pardons do is end the weaponization of prosecution over political disagreements by Democrats like AG Nessel.

Speaking of the AG, she’s still nursing her wounds in public over the case. She said in a statement about the pardons, “In 2020, President Trump launched an all-out assault against American democracy in his efforts to overturn the presidential election results and preserve his hold on power. Today, President Trump pardoned more than 70 individuals, many of whom authored, executed, or otherwise knowingly assisted the president’s plot and efforts to overturn the election.”