Outgoing President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of 1,500 people and pardoning 39 others in the biggest ever single-day act of clemency in the US.
The names of the people involved have not been given but the pardons are for those convicted of non-violent crimes.
The commutations on Thursday were announced for those who were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden said these people would have received shorter sentences if charged under today’s laws, policies, and practices.
The pardons come over a week after the president was criticized for pardoning his own son Hunter from his federal crimes.
Officials said last week that the White House was listening to demands for Biden to extend the same grace to thousands of people wronged by the U.S. judicial system.
Sources had told Reuters last week that the pardons that were being discussed were said to include those convicted of nonviolent drug offenses and people identified by civil rights groups as unjustly incarcerated.
Biden said he would be taking more steps in the weeks ahead and would continue to review clemency petitions.
The second largest single-day act of clemency was by Barack Obama, with 330, shortly before leaving office in 2017.
President Joe Biden speaks at the White House Conference on Women’s Health Research from the East Room of the White House in Washington
Hunter was last season on holiday with his father and the rest of the Bidens on Nantucket in Rhode Island
‘As President, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses,’ Biden said.
The president added that he will take more steps in the weeks ahead and that his administration will continue reviewing clemency petitions.
When Biden pardoned his son Hunter last month, he described his prosecution as ‘selective’ and ‘unfair.’
The shock decision came just weeks after The White House denied the president would issue the pardon in the final months of his tenure.
Biden, himself, said as recently as June that, unlike Trump who has outright said he wants to pardon January 6 rioters.
‘From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,’ Biden said in a statement.
The president claimed that people are ‘almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form… It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.’
Biden raged against ‘several of my political opponents in Congress’ who he claimed made the charges a public spectacle ‘to attack me and oppose my election.’
He added that the plea deal Hunter, who has since pledged to ‘make amends’ for his crimes, agreed to with the Department of Justice was a ‘fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.’ But that deal fell through at the last minute under political pressure.
‘No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because is my son – and that is wrong,’ he continued.
Other presidents have issued controversial pardons – usually in the final days of their presidency.
In 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon for any crimes he had ‘committed or may have committed’ in the Watergate scandal. This was the first pre-emptive pardon by a president.
In 2001, President Bill Clinton pardoned 140 people on his last day in office including billionaire Marc Rich, who had been a fugitive for decades for fraud related to making illegal oil deals and not paying more than $48 million in taxes.
Family pardons are also not unheard of in presidential history. Before he left office, Clinton granted brother Roger a controversial presidential pardon for a 1985 cocaine-trafficking conviction.
Trump himself pardoned Charles Kushner, father of son-in-law and ex-advisor Jared, before leaving office in 2020. Kushner was just yesterday named the US ambassador to France.
In the last 12 hours of his presidency, Donald Trump pardoned and commuted the sentences of 144 people, including former advisors Stephen Bannon and Roger Stone, as well as the rapper Lil Wayne.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk