By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Mark Landler
President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 convicted of nonviolent crimes, the largest grant of clemency by an American president in a single day, the White House announced in a statement on Thursday.
The commutations affect mostly those who had been released from prison and placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic. The people who received pardons were convicted of nonviolent crimes, including possession of marijuana.
The announcement came two weeks after Biden issued a pardon for his son, Hunter, who had been convicted of gun possession and income tax evasion. That decision was harshly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats because Biden had long ruled out clemency for his son.
The White House said that the clemency announced on Thursday represented Biden’s commitment to “help reunite families, strengthen communities, and reintegrate individuals back into society.”
Biden, the statement said, is the first president to issue categorical pardons to people convicted of simple use and possession of marijuana, as well as to former service members convicted of violating the military’s former laws against homosexual conduct.
For months, activists have been pushing Biden to use his clemency power for inmates who were moved to home confinement during the pandemic, when COVID was spreading rapidly through jails and prisons. Some Republicans, who are set to take control of Congress next month, have tried to push legislation that would have forced those people to return to prison.
In his statement on Thursday, Biden said that many of those people would have received lower sentences if they had been charged under current laws.
“These commutation recipients, who were placed on home confinement during the COVID pandemic, have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance,” he said.
Biden said that he would take more steps in the weeks ahead and would continue to review clemency petitions. His staff has been debating whether he should issue blanket pardons for a number of President-elect Donald Trump’s perceived enemies to protect them from the “retribution” Trump has threatened, people familiar with the discussion have said.
White House officials do not believe the potential recipients have actually committed crimes, but they have grown increasingly worried that Trump’s selections for top Justice Department positions indicate that he will follow through on his repeated vows to seek revenge. The idea would be to preemptively extend executive clemency to a list of current and former government officials, effectively short-circuiting the next president’s promised campaign of reprisals.
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