Justice Department attorney Ed Martin said Trump is leading a broader effort to identify people he believes have been wronged by Presidents Obama and Biden.
A look inside the pardon process during President Trump’s term
Breaking with tradition, President Donald Trump granted pardons with unique terms.
WASHINGTON – The more than 70 people President Donald Trump has pardoned, including fake electors accused of aiding and abetting his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, are likely just the beginning.
President Trump’s pardon lawyer Ed Martin said on November 10 that more conservatives allegedly “targeted” by the Joe Biden and Barack Obama administrations are next.
Martin’s statement comes amid a year-long flurry of presidential pardons wiping out a clean slate of convicts, including the Jan. 6 rioters, numerous convicted fraudsters and several political allies.
“Just a little bit behind the curtain, when I started working as a U.S. pardon attorney, the president encouraged us to focus on two categories of Americans in particular,” Martin said, referring to Trump as president of the United States.
The first are “people who need and deserve a pardon, especially long-serving prisoners who are ready for release,” Martin said in the X post.
“Second, he said he wants us to look at the people who have been targeted by the Biden administration,” Martin said. “The target was a large group of Americans.”
Martin said his first job was with 2020 “alternate electors and their associates,” a group targeted by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith and other investigators and prosecutors at the state level in Georgia, Arizona and other states.
But Martin said, “There are many other Americans that Biden targeted. We are working to help them.”
In the pardons Martin announced late on Nov. 9, President Trump pardoned a number of allies, including his former personal lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who faced charges and investigations for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election.
These pardons, which President Trump called a “process of national reconciliation,” followed the pardons on the first day of President Trump’s second term of approximately 1,600 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Those recently pardoned include Mark Meadows, President Trump’s former White House chief of staff. Jeffrey Clark, former Assistant Attorney General; Kenneth Chesebro is a private attorney who previously advised Trump. and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who worked for Trump in the 2020 election. All four are facing state charges related to election interference in Georgia, and Chesebro and Powell have pleaded guilty.
Find someone who “deserves a break”
Martin went further in an extended interview with former Trump aide Steve Bannon on the War Room podcast on November 10th.
Martin said that as a pardon attorney and head of the Justice Department’s Use of Weapons Task Group, he is leading a wide-ranging effort to identify a wide range of people who Trump believes have been wronged by either of the past two Democratic presidents.
Martin said during a meeting in the Oval Office that the president directed him to find “those who deserve a break,” including “those who were given arms against us by Biden and, by the way, Mr. Obama.”
“And the pardon is going to start to change that, so I think this is a start,” Martin said. “I know because I’m involved in knowing the truth about 2020.”
Martin said the list also includes people who have not yet been pardoned in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
He also mentioned the FACE Act, which clearly refers to people charged under the Freedom of Admission to Clinics Act, a 1994 federal law that prohibits physically interfering with people receiving abortion or reproductive health services or damaging related facilities.
President Trump calls for release of Colorado state employees
“We have been fighting for two months to find a resolution regarding Tina Peters,” Martin said, including putting pressure on Colorado officials.
Peters, a former Colorado Republican Party secretary and recorder who denies Biden won the 2020 election, was convicted of allowing someone to access secure voting system data in an effort to prove a baseless election denial conspiracy.
She was sentenced in October 2024 to nine years in prison on seven charges related to tampering with election machines in Mesa County, including attempting to influence a public official, conspiracy to commit identity theft, and first-degree official misconduct.
President Trump himself called for Peter’s release in a social media post on Aug. 21, saying she is an “old woman” and “very ill” who should be released from prison, threatening “very severe action” if she is not released, while repeating his claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
Contributor: Bert Jansen
