Diogenes
Nemo me impune lacessit
WAS HE EVEN AWARE OF WHAT WAS DONE IN HIS NAME?
“I am proposing that we actually impose some guardrails on the president of the United States, requiring an explanation, at the very least, some explanation for why pardon has been accorded, and some notice to the prosecutors,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told a Connecticut NBC station.
The ability to pardon someone is one of the few areas where the president’s power is completely unchecked. There’s no constitutional mandate for a president to go through a certain process, and they’re free to pardon any person — no matter the crime or whether it could put a potentially dangerous person back on the street.
There have been plenty of calls to abolish the pardon power over the years, and presidents of both parties have used it to grant relief for friends, family members and donors.
While President Biden hailed his extensive clemency as “an important step toward righting historic wrongs” and boasted that he had issued “more individual pardons and commutations than any president in U.S. history,” he only further inflamed some Justice Department officials, who were already angered over Biden’s characterization of the agency as infected with “raw politics” when he pardoned his son Hunter Biden.
They then saw Biden’s mass clemency as both rushed and careless.
As part of that move, only 10% of those granted clemency were Justice Department recommendations.
Among those who benefited from Biden’s action — drawing outrage — was an inmate named Adrian Peeler who was convicted in the 1999 murder of an 8-year-old boy and his mother. Peeler, 48, had served his sentence for the murder but faced more prison time for dealing crack cocaine. He was not due to be released from a West Virginia prison until 2033.
Another was Lairon Graham, convicted of sex trafficking and trafficking fentanyl.
At the time of Graham’s 2023 plea deal, Trini E. Ross, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of New York, described Graham’s crimes in stark terms.
“This defendant not only sold dangerous and illegal drugs in our community, he used the addiction of vulnerable women to prey upon them and force them to commit sex acts for his financial benefit,” Ross said in a statement. “We as a society cannot, and will not, tolerate this type of criminal activity.”
Biden’s action meant Graham’s sentence was reduced from 22 years to 12½ years.
In a Feb 2. op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Danielle Sassoon (before her resignation), she said it was “disheartening to see some of the most dangerous offenders released on the readily disprovable misconception that they are nonviolent.”
The frustration of many at the Justice Department was knowing that they have a backlog of thousands of requests for clemency — many of which officials saw as sympathetic — and watching Biden turned to his own agenda late in the game, according to one person familiar with the process, with Biden not making unfairly imposed lengthy prison terms a clemency priority until the 11th hour.
Further frustrating Justice Department officials were the pardons handed out to members of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, other members and aides of the House Jan. 6 committee, and Capitol and Washington Metropolitan police officers who testified before it. Biden timed the public announcement of those pardons for his last day in office — before one final strike: pre-emptive pardons for his family members.
A Biden spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
