Trump may have inadvertently issued mass pardon for 2020 voter fraud, experts say

Donald Trump may have inadvertently pardoned any citizen who committed voter fraud in 2020 when he granted a pardon to Rudy Giuliani and other allies for their efforts to overturn the election, legal experts say. The pardons of Giuliani and others who participated in the fake elector scheme earlier this month were largely symbolic since the federal government dismissed its criminal cases once Trump was elected. Many of those pardoned have faced criminal charges at the state level. But, the federal pardon could wind up having a big effect on people like Matthew Alan Laiss, who is accused of voting in both Pennsylvania and Florida in the 2020 election. According to a federal indictment handed down in September, Laiss moved from Pennsylvania to Florida in August of 2020 and voted first with a mail-in ballot in Pennsylvania and then in person in Florida on election day. Both votes were for Trump, Laiss’s lawyers wrote in court documents. He has pleaded not guilty. The case is still in its early stages. Last week, Laiss’s lawyers, public defenders Katrina Young and Elizabeth Toplin, argued that the charges should be thrown out because Trump had pardoned him. They argued that Trump’s 7 November pardon was sweeping. It applies to any US citizen 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.” And while it lists a number of people the pardon specifically applies to, it also says the pardon is not limited to those named. That language is so broad, lawyers for Laiss wrote, it also applies to their client. “When Mr Laiss cast two votes in the general election for President Trump for the office of president of the United States in Pennsylvania and Florida, he support[ed], vot[ed for] … [and] advoca[ted] for [a] slate or proposed slate of presidential electors … in connection with the 2020 presidential election,” they wrote. “By its plain language, the pardon extends to Mr Laiss, and his motion to dismiss should therefore be granted.” That reading of the pardon’s text is believable, said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, who first wrote about the request Laiss’s lawyers were making. “Here you’ve got kind of a broad set of conduct and an undefined group of individuals who are protected,” Muller said in an interview. “It’s quite plausible to read this and suggest that anyone involved in voting for slates of presidential electors in 2020 has now been pardoned.” Liz Oyer, who was fired as the justice department’s pardon attorney earlier this year, said in an interview it was clear the pardon applied beyond the names listed in the document. “The language is not very precise, and so it’s hard to parse what would fall within it and what would fall outside it without looking at each case individually. That is going to create a lot of work for courts,” she said. “I believe this is the result of the administration not relying on experts in the office of the pardon attorney to draft pardon paperwork. “One of the core responsibilities of the pardon attorney’s office is to ensure that the paperwork that is drafted is unambiguous, so questions do not arise about what the president’s intent was,” she added. It’s unclear how many other people could be affected by the pardon. Voter fraud is extremely rare and the limited instances of crimes like voter impersonation or double voting are typically handled by local prosecutors, not federal ones. The rare voter fraud cases the justice department has prosecuted in recent years have typically involved non-citizens falsely claiming they are eligible to vote. Those cases are unaffected by Trump’s pardon because the document makes clear it only applies to US citizens, Muller noted. Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, agreed that the federal pardon applied to citizens who may have committed voting crimes in 2020, though he noted they still could be subject to state prosecution. He added that Trump’s pardon also appeared to cover election officials who oversaw voting in 2020. Some of those officials drew immense pressure and criticism from Trump as they defended the way elections were run. “I think this language gives election officials some much-needed ability to breathe just a bit earlier, taking sham federal prosecutions off the table for officials who ran the 2020 elections,” Levitt wrote in a blogpost. Federal prosecutors in the eastern district of Pennsylvania, which is handling the case, have not yet responded to the motion. The justice department did not reply to a request for comment. A blanket pardon for all voter fraud in 2020 would be a paradoxical and somewhat embarrassing result for the Trump administration. Voter fraud is exceedingly rare, but Trump has nonetheless used the specter of it to champion restrictions on mail-in voting and to advocate for voter ID and same day registration. An unintentional blanket pardon could also be embarrassing for Ed Martin, a Trump ally who was appointed the justice department’s pardon attorney after he failed to get enough support to be the top federal prosecutor in the district of Columbia. Martin is also leading a justice department committee focused on punishing the president’s political rivals.