Outgoing President Joe Biden commutes the sentences of 1,500 people and pardons 39 others in the largest act of clemency ever in the US.
The names of the people involved have not been released, but the pardons are for those convicted of non-violent crimes.
The commutation was announced Thursday for those placed in home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden said these people would have received shorter sentences if charged under current laws, policies and practices.
The pardon comes more than a week after the president faced criticism for pardoning his own son Hunter for his federal crimes.
Officials said last week that the White House was listening to demands for Biden to grant the same pardons to thousands of people wronged by the U.S. justice system.
Sources had told Reuters last week that the pardons under discussion also included those convicted of non-violent drug offenses and people identified by civil rights groups as wrongfully imprisoned.
Biden said he would take more steps in the coming weeks and continue to review clemency requests.
The second largest act of clemency in a single day was by Barack Obama, with 330, shortly before he left 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 vacationed with his father and the rest of the Bidens on Nantucket, Rhode Island, last season
“As President, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated repentance and rehabilitation, giving Americans the opportunity to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and to take steps to address disparities in sentencing for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug crimes,” Biden said.
The president added that he will take more steps in the coming weeks and that his administration will continue to review clemency requests.
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 a pardon in the final months of his term.
Biden himself recently said in June that, unlike Trump, who has said outright that he wants to pardon the January 6 rioters.
“From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Department of Justice’s decision-making, and I have kept my word even as I watched my son be selectively and unjustly prosecuted,” Biden said in a statement. declaration.
The president claimed that people “are almost never brought to trial on a felony charge solely because of the way they filled out a gun form…It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.”
Biden railed against “several of my political opponents in Congress,” who he claimed were turning the accusations into a public spectacle “to attack me and oppose my election.”
He added that the plea deal that Hunter, who has since vowed to “make amends” for his crimes, reached with the Justice Department was a “fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.” But that deal fell through at the last minute due to political pressure.
“No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases could come to any conclusion other than that Hunter was singled out solely because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he continued.
Other presidents have issued controversial pardons — usually in the final days of their presidencies.
In 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon for all crimes he “committed or may have committed” in the Watergate scandal. This was the first preventive pardon by a president.
In 2001, President Bill Clinton on his last day in office pardoned 140 people, including billionaire Marc Rich, who had been a fugitive for decades on fraud charges related to making illegal oil deals and failing to pay more than $48 million in taxes.
Family pardons are also not unheard of in presidential history. Before leaving 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-adviser Jared, before leaving office in 2020. Yesterday, Kushner was appointed US ambassador to France.
In the last 12 hours of his presidency, Donald Trump pardoned and commuted the sentences of 144 people, including former advisers Stephen Bannon and Roger Stone, as well as rapper Lil Wayne.