Trump grants pardons to 70+ allies in 2020 election interference case
Donald Trump pardoned 77 people, including former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, who allegedly tried to overturn the 2020 US election – which Mr Trump has long maintained he actually won.
Donald Trump granted sweeping pardons to top allies accused of attempting to subvert the 2020 election, the administration’s pardon attorney Ed Martin said.
Martin shared a list on X of more than 70 people, including the president’s former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, and Mr Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who were granted “full, complete and unconditional” pardons.
The names on the list were embroiled in an alleged scheme to question election results in battleground states, including Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, which Joe Biden had secured in his successful 2020 presidential run.
None of those named in the four-page pardons missive were charged on the federal level, but the directive could prevent future administrations from prosecuting the alleged co-conspirators.
The names also include John Eastman, a lawyer who proposed strategies to prevent the certification of the election results, and longtime Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn.
In the missive granting pardons for actions “in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election” or relating to “efforts to expose voting fraud,” Mr Trump said that “this pardon does not apply to the President of the United States.”
Giuliani claimed he hadn’t talked to the president about a potential pardon in recent years.
“I was surprised. No one can say President Trump can’t keep a secret,” he told the New York Post.
The Republican, who was once called ‘America’s mayor,’ said the prosecutions were “the worst distortions of the American justice system in our history.”
“This period will also go down as the darkest chapter in our court system,” Giuliani said. “A lot of these electors who were indicted were regular people.”
“President Trump ended a long nightmare for innocent people,” the former New York City mayor and Trump lawyer told The Post a day after Mr Trump’s Department of Justice granted pardons to 77 people tied to the alleged plot.
“The president has made the justice system fair again,” he added.
“This pardon decision shows there were two justice systems.”
In his decision, US Pardon Attorney Edward Martin Jr said the New York Post was also victimised by orchestrated partisan censorship involving the FBI under President Joe Biden.
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US STRIKES ON ALLEGED PACIFIC DRUG BOATS KILL SIX MORE
US forces have killed six more people in strikes on alleged drug-running boats, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said, bringing the campaign’s total number of deaths, which critics describe as illegal executions, to 76.
Hegseth, in a post on X, said the United States had carried out the strikes on Sunday in international waters in the eastern Pacific, targeting two boats “carrying narcotics” with three people on board each.
“All 6 were killed. No U.S. forces were harmed,” he said.
US officials did not release the identities of those killed.
The administration has released no firm evidence that the boats have been smuggling narcotics or posed a threat to the United States.
Experts say the strikes, which have taken place in both the Pacific and Caribbean, amount to extrajudicial killings even if they target known traffickers.
Hegseth said the two vessels were “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations,” but did not name the groups.
The Trump administration has said in a notice to Congress that the US is engaged in “armed conflict” with Latin American drug cartels, describing them as terrorist groups as part of its justification for the strikes.
Video accompanying Hegseth’s post showed a strike on one boat sitting stationary in the water, and a separate open-top vessel exploding while underway.
A short video clip in colour of the moving vessel shows what appears to be several parcels loaded inside. No details can be made out on the stationary vessel, which appears in black-and-white video.
The US strikes have now destroyed so far 19 boats and a semi-submersible.
TRUMP’S THAI-CAMBODIA PEACE DEAL EXPLODES
Thailand announced it was suspending the implementation of a peace agreement with neighbouring Cambodia after a landmine blast injured two Thai soldiers near the border.
The deal, overseen by US President Donald Trump, was meant to secure a lasting end to hostilities following border clashes in July that killed at least 43 people and displaced more than 300,000 civilians on both sides.
The Royal Thai Army said in a statement that the mine explosion in Sisaket province left one soldier with a severe leg injury, while pressure from the blast caused another to withstand chest pains.
Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told a news conference that “we thought that the security threat had eased, but it has not actually decreased.”
Cambodia’s foreign ministry said in a statement it was “gravely concerned” by the Thai move.
Phnom Penh remained “committed to implementing the Joint Declaration,” it said.
The Southeast Asian neighbours have a dispute over parts of their border dating back more than a century, but July’s fighting was sparked by Thailand’s claims that Cambodia planted landmines that wounded its troops – a claim Cambodia denies.
‘GET BACK TO WORK NOW’: TRUMP’S DEMAND TO AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS
US President Donald Trump forcefully demanded that all air traffic controllers return to work – despite not being paid during the ongoing government shutdown – and threatened punishment for those who do not.
“All Air Traffic Controllers must get back to work, NOW!!! Anyone who doesn’t will be substantially ‘docked,’” the president wrote on his Truth Social platform.
US airlines cancelled more than 2,500 weekend flights as the Federal Aviation Administration’s mandate to reduce air traffic because of the government shutdown showed no signs of easing.
On Monday, US time, more than 1,600 flights had been cancelled by US airlines and thousands more were delayed as the longest government shutdown in history entered its 41st day, causing travel chaos at some of the nation’s biggest airports.
It comes as the Senate took a major step on Sunday night, US time, to end the longest government shutdown in American history by voting to end debate on a bipartisan deal that would keep the government funded through January 30, 2026.
The upper chamber could vote any moment on final passage of the agreement, with the House all but certain to send it to President Trump’s desk later this week.
Seven Democrats — Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — along with Democrat-affiliated independent Angus King of Maine voted alongside 52 Republicans to break the filibuster on the spending package, which includes three spending bills to fund SNAP benefits, veterans programs and congressional operations through Sept. 30, 2026.
As news of the breakthrough emerged, Mr Trump told reporters when he arrived at the White House after a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida: “It looks like we’re getting very close to the shutdown ending.”
It comes after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the number of flights being snarled or cut would multiply if the funding impasse between Democrats and Republicans continues while Americans gear up to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday later this month.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Mr Duffy said on CNN.
By Monday (AEDT), the number of cancellations of flights within the United States and to and from the US had surpassed 2300, with more than 8000 delays, according to data from tracking platform FlightAware.
Airports that were particularly hard hit included the three New York City area airports, Chicago’s O’Hare, and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.
Twenty-seven per cent of flights due to leave Newark were scrapped, with delays to 40 per cent of outbound flights, FlightAware showed.
At New York’s LaGuardia Airport more than half of all outbound flights were delayed.
SUPREME COURT REJECTS BID TO OVERTURN SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
The Supreme Court confirmed it had rejected a longshot bid by Kim Davis, the former Kentucky court clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple, to get the justices to reconsider the court’s 2015 ruling legalising same-sex marriage nationwide.
Davis, 59, petitioned the justices in July to review a lower court’s 2022 finding that she violated David Ermold and David Moore’s constitutional right to marry.
Four justices would have had to support hearing the case for oral arguments to be scheduled.
‘FOOLS’: TRUMP’S $3000 PROMISE TO AMERICANS
Donald Trump has promised to pay each American a “divided” of at least $US2000 ($A3080) once the money from his global tariffs starts rolling in.
Mr Trump took to Truth Social to make the announcement early Monday AEDT.
“People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS! We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price,” Mr Trump said. “We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place.
“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
The White House has not yet clarified at what income threshold households would be exempt from receiving the cheques.
The post comes after the Supreme Court questioned the legality of his use of emergency powers to impose sweeping new tariffs on nearly every country on Earth, The NY Post reports.
In a separate post, President Trump fumed at the Supreme Court challenge to him using the
1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to enact the tariffs.
“So, let’s get this straight??? The President of the United States is allowed (and fully approved by Congress!) to stop ALL TRADE with a Foreign Country (Which is far more onerous than a Tariff!), and LICENSE a Foreign Country, but is not allowed to put a simple Tariff on a Foreign Country, even for purposes of NATIONAL SECURITY,” Mr Trump wrote.
“That is NOT what our great Founders had in mind! The whole thing is ridiculous! Other Countries can Tariff us, but we can’t Tariff them??? It is their DREAM!!!
“Businesses are pouring into the USA ONLY BECAUSE OF TARIFFS. HAS THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT NOT BEEN TOLD THIS??? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON???”
Mr Trump said earlier this week he would pursue other options to impose trade tariffs if the Supreme Court rules against his flagship economic policy.
After the court appeared sceptical of the tariffs’ legality, Mr Trump said an adverse ruling “would be devastating for our country, but I also think that we’ll have to develop a game two plan.”
“We can do other things but they’re slow by comparison,” President Trump said at the time.
BEIJING AGREES TO FRESH TARIFF DE-ESCALATION
China suspended an export ban to the United States that had targeted gallium, germanium and antimony, metals crucial for modern technology, Beijing’s commerce ministry announced early Monday AEDT in a further de-escalation of the trade war with Washington.
The restrictions banned the export of so-called dual-use goods, materials that can have both civilian and military applications.
Imposed in December 2024, the ban will now be suspended until November 27, 2026, Beijing’s commerce ministry said in a statement.
The announcement comes after leaders Xi Jinping and Donald Trump met on October 30 in South Korea and agreed to walk back some punitive measures imposed during their tit for tat tariff escalation.
At one point, duties on both sides had reached prohibitive triple-digit levels, hampering trade between the world’s two largest economies and snarling global supply chains.
– with AFP
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Originally published as Trump grants pardons to 70+ allies in 2020 election interference case