Fading from public view as President-elect Donald Trump increasingly wields the bully pulpit, Biden started Christmas week by commuting the death sentences of 37 of the 40 convicts awaiting execution at the federal level on Monday.
It was part of a wave of commutations and pardons issued by the outgoing president since a sweeping pardon of his son Hunter at the beginning of the month.
Biden’s act of clemency benefited people who committed grisly acts, including rape and murder. If he were still a candidate for reelection rather than a departing president, he would be vulnerable to the type of Willie Horton ad that helped George H.W. Bush defeat Democrat Michael Dukakis by a landslide margin in 1988.
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“These are among the worst killers in the world, and this abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones,” Trump communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement. “President Trump stands for the rule of law, which will return when he is back in the White House after he was elected with a massive mandate from the American people.”
But Biden was pushed out of the 2024 presidential race by Democratic leaders after a disastrous debate performance. His replacement at the top of the Democrats’ ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris, went on to lose the election in November. This is a move that can only be made by a politician who will never face the voters again.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement issued by the White House. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
Without mentioning Trump by name, Biden indicated he could not let his predecessor-turned-successor execute these prisoners. “These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” he said, explaining three federal death row inmates he chose not to spare.
Biden’s death penalty commutations come ahead of his final trip as president, in which he will visit Pope Francis, who has called for an end to such executions. Biden is the second Catholic president of the United States.
Yet Biden distanced himself from Catholic teachings on social issues such as abortion, embracing the reinstatement of Roe v. Wade as a top Democratic campaign issue after opposing the 1973 Supreme Court ruling into the 1980s. Trump beat Harris, Biden’s preferred successor, among Catholic voters by 20 points. Harris won just 35% of white Catholics to Trump’s 63%, according to exit polls.
Biden has now pardoned more than 8,000 people, though a few more controversial than when he erased not just two Hunter Biden felony convictions but protected him from crimes possibly committed as far back as 2014. That covers much of the time period in which the younger Biden was involved in shady foreign business dealings that some have alleged might implicate his father while he was a sitting and then former vice president.
It remains to be seen whether other members of the Biden family, such as his brother James, will be pardoned in the closing days of the administration. Divisive pardons, such as Bill Clinton’s of Marc Rich in 2001, are often delayed until the end.
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Biden’s activity on the clemency front stands in sharp contrast with his relative silence on averting a government shutdown late last week, where Trump and his team were much more vocal. Biden signed legislation into law over the weekend, keeping the federal government open.
Biden’s term will expire as Trump is sworn into office for a second nonconsecutive term at noon on Jan. 20.
