President Joe Biden has already pardoned, commuted, or granted clemency to 8,027 convicted criminals, including his own son, and he still has five weeks to go.
To compare the swarm of pardons with those of 14 previous presidents, it’s extraordinary. Here are the numbers:
Franklin D. Roosevelt – 3,687
Harry S. Truman – 2,044
Dwight D. Eisenhower – 1,157
John F. Kennedy – 575 (his term was cut short by his assassination)
Lyndon B. Johnson – 1,187
Richard Nixon – 926
Gerald Ford – 409
Jimmy Carter – 566 (plus 200,000 blanket pardoned draft dodgers from the Vietnam War)
Ronald Reagan – 406
Bill J. Clinton – 459
George W. Bush – 200
Barack H. Obama – 1,927
Donald J. Trump – 237
Joseph R. Biden – 8,027
Among the people Biden had previously granted clemency to were two probable Chinese spies convicted of espionage and a relative of an officer in the Chinese Communist Party who had possession of tens of thousands of images of child porn on his computer while he was a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. All three were part of a prisoner swap with China.
A Biden commutation was given to a pair of Pennsylvania judges who had sent nearly 1,500 juveniles to for-profit detention centers in exchange for kickbacks. Former Judge Michael Conahan was the ringleader along with Judge Mark Ciavarella in the “Kids for Cash” judicial corruption scandal.
Biden’s most eyebrow-raising pardon was a blanket pardon for his wayward son Hunter, who was set to be sentenced on Dec. 12. The president pardoned him for all known and unknown crimes that took place in a 10-year period, during which Biden was vice president and also president.
Most of his recent pardons and commutations were for felony drug convictions possession or selling of meth, cocaine, and crack cocaine.
