Outgoing Presidential Joe Biden continued his release list of pardons as a last act of his administration. The most notable was arguably his son, Hunter Biden in December, for felony tax evasion charges, along with convictions related to firearms possession.
Some of the individuals involved had not been adjudicated or even charged for a crime, but were given “preemptive pardons,” precluding the possibility of their being prosecuted by the incoming Donald Trump administration. To this end Biden has extended preemptive pardons to family members James and Frank, his sister Valerie, and their spouses.
New York University legal scholar Rachel Barkow explained the nontraditional form of clemency, noting that “…when most people use the term [preemptive pardon], they mean that you’re giving a pardon before someone has actually been convicted — or even before they’ve been charged or investigated.”
These pardons include former U.S. House of Representative Liz Cheney and others who challenged Trump as members of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack.
Other recipients considered oppositional to the new administration are retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose preventative measures to combat the COVID-19 epidemic drew criticism from conservative elements within the political establishment.
Law enforcement officers involved in the Jan. 6 incident, Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone were also on the list.
Biden has also pardoned over 2,500 people imprisoned largely because of marijuana violations and other nonviolent drug offenses. More controversial is Terry “Southwest T” Flenory of Detroit’s Black Mafia Family (BMF), pardoned on charges related to drug trafficking.
Convicted recipients include 80 year old Native American Leonard Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Peltier had been incarcerated for the murder of two FBI agents, and will transition to home confinement.
Biden started this cycle of clemency in 2022, when he pardoned the first African American Secret Service Agent, Abraham Bolden. A member of the presidential detail of President John F. Kennedy, Bolden was convicted and imprisoned on charges of bribery, conspiracy, fraud and obstructing justice after exposing lapses in security and misconduct just prior to Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
Among the noteworthy acts of communion set into play is Biden’s shift of 37 federal prisoners on death row to life sentences, an act anticipating President Donald Trump’s vow to reinstate the death penalty.
Ironically two of these inmates, Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, both imprisoned in Indiana, have rejected Biden’s gesture of absolution. Both maintain their innocence, and apparently seek exoneration via the judicial system.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order overturning restrictions on the death penalty, reasoning that capital punishment is an “…essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens.”
