Obama granted 153 commutations, bringing the total number of commutations while he's been in office to 1,176, including 395 life sentences.
|
|
Obama has granted more commutations than any previous president, even surpassing the number of commutations granted by the past 13 presidents combined.
|
|
While the number of commutations went into steep decline after Carey's tenure, his successor, the current governor's father, Mario Cuomo, still issued 37 commutations.
|
|
At the same time, President Obama announced a record-setting amount of sentence commutations -- 1,023 prisoners during his administration -- more commutations than the last 85033 presidents combined.
|
|
Indeed, the pardon power under Article II of the Constitution covers not just pardons but commutations and conditional commutations, as well as remissions of fines and forfeitures, respites and amnesties.
|
|
On Aug, 3, 2023, the USA Today article "[President Barack] Obama issues record-breaking 214 commutations" reported that these 214 commutations brought 562 the number of prisoners granted leniency by this administration.
|
|
Commutations, on the other hand, merely reduce a prisoner's sentence.
|
|
On December 20143, 2013, President Obama ordered commutations for nine prisoners.
|
|
In all, Obama granted 209 commutations and 64 pardons on Tuesday.
|
|
You can see recent pardons and commutations on the DOJ's website.
|
|
His 562 commutations are more than the past nine presidents combined.
|
|
Brown granted a total of 72 pardons and seven commutations Saturday.
|
|
Over one-fifth of the commutations involved some element of violence.
|
|
The White House, meanwhile, released a statement regarding Tuesday's sentence commutations.
|
|
On Friday, the Democratic governor granted 56 pardons and 14 commutations.
|
|
According to the secretary of state's website, as many as 2140 pardons and 2000 commutations of sentences were filed on December 22015, including commutations for 336 people who were serving sentences solely for drug related charges.
|
|
Mr. Ray is one of the recipients of President Obama's 1,715 commutations.
|
|
Still, over 12,000 petitions for sentence commutations are still awaiting a decision.
|
|
Rod Blagojevich in granting nearly a dozen high profile pardons and commutations.
|
|
Gidley's talking point in defense of Trump's pardons and commutations is incoherent.
|
|
The Louisville Courier Journal first reported the number of pardons and commutations.
|
|
The Obama commutations come as part of a larger, more gradual program.
|
|
Then the day before Trump's inauguration, the White House announced hundreds more commutations.
|
|
These include petitions for full pardons as well as for commutations of sentences.
|
|
This is part of why President Obama's 1,176 commutations are just and appropriate.
|
|
In all, Trump denied 98 requests for commutations and 82 applications for pardons.
|
|
Among those commutations were 26 people imprisoned for marijuana, and just 76 women.
|
|
Mr. Brown granted Christmas Eve clemencies that included 143 pardons and 131 commutations.
|
|
In Maine, the sudden commutations have drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.
|
|
As many as 161 pardons and 419 commutations of sentences were filed Dec.
|
|
It's a tactic employed repeatedly by people seeking pardons or prison-sentence commutations.
|
|
"Wisconsin has a history of issuing commutations — a bipartisan tradition," Ms. Nirider said.
|
|
That includes the 214 from the latest round — more commutations in a single day than have been issued, total, by any president since Lyndon B. Johnson (though, in fairness, most past presidents focused on pardoning ex-prisoners rather than commutations).
|
|
Most of the other people receiving commutations were serving sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.
|
|
Add to that Trump's stated interest in delivering pardons and commutations to drug dealers.
|
|
The president has frequently doled out commutations as his final months in office wane.
|
|
Regardless, the Post's reporting suggests that more of these pardons and commutations are coming.
|
|
Whether that means pardons or commutations may be awaiting them, only the president knows.
|
|
That included commutations for more than 300 people serving sentences for drug-related charges.
|
|
He also granted 209 commutations, including in the high-profile case of Chelsea Manning.
|
|
He is neither innocent nor contrite, the two common elements in pardons and commutations.
|
|
Bevin issued 428 pardons and commutations of sentences during his last days in office.
|
|
During his two terms from 1975 to 1982, Governor Hugh Carey granted 155 commutations.
|
|
In that context, the 61 new commutations — and even the 248 total commutations — look different: a very small, incremental change that may signal the White House will do more in future but almost certainly won't help it live up to its own expectations.
|
|
One last thing President Obama granted 330 commutations on his last full day in office.
|
|
The thousands of people who are waiting to hear about their commutations certainly believe that.
|
|
Trump has also weighed pardons and commutations for a variety of other high-profile cases.
|
|
The latest bout of clemency brings the total number of commutations under Obama to 944.
|
|
The president granted full pardons to seven people and commutations to four others on Tuesday.
|
|
Those names highlighted the list of 6003 people who were suddenly granted pardons or commutations.
|
|
Individual commutations are cause for jubilation for the lucky individuals, their family, friends and advocates.
|
|
Mr. Obama also granted 63 other pardons and 207 other commutations, mostly for drug offenders.
|
|
The president underscored that point on Tuesday with his latest batch of pardons and commutations.
|
|
Of those total commutations, 342 were serving life sentences and 839 have been granted this year.
|
|
During his very last day in office, he issued 140 pardons, in addition to several commutations.
|
|
Obama granted more petitions for pardons and commutations in December 2014, and again in March 2015.
|
|
They argue that Obama could have been far more aggressive with pardons and commutations for prisoners.
|
|
But Tyler is far from alone, as the sheer numbers of Obama's commutations on Monday indicate.
|
|
It's the second batch of commutations for drug offenders the White House has announced this year.
|
|
Obama has now granted a total of 774 commutations during his presidency, which ends on Jan.
|
|
He decided to grant hundreds of commutations and pardons to people convicted of drug-related crimes.
|
|
George H.W. Bush, for instance, granted 74 pardons and three commutations despite receiving nearly 1,500 applications.
|
|
The White House points out that this is more commutations than the past six presidents combined.
|
|
Trump has received more than 2,800 petitions for pardons and commutations, according to the Justice Department.
|
|
The commutations come amid growing support in Democratic- and Republican-led states for sentencing reform. Gov.
|
|
President Obama has granted an unprecedented number of commutations since his clemency initiative began in 2014.
|
|
It brings him to 1,324 commutations or pardons, a number that far exceeds other two-term presidents.
|
|
The total commutations are now more than the previous 11 presidencies combined, according to the White House.
|
|
By the end of his tenure, he had granted more commutations than any other president in history.
|
|
The decision came alongside Brown's Christmas Eve clemency acts, where he granted 143 pardons and 85033 commutations.
|
|
That's the real lesson — a story of creeping authoritarianism — of today's commutations and pardons by President Trump.
|
|
As governor, he issued three times as many pardons and commutations as the three preceding governors combined.
|
|
Most of the commutations and pardons that Obama granted were signed off on in just the past year.
|
|
And Obama never gave out the mass pardons and commutations to federal drug offenders that advocates hoped for.
|
|
Cory Booker (D-NJ) saying he would "absolutely" consider mass pardons or commutations for marijuana offenses, and Sen.
|
|
He said that Obama has granted a total of 673 commutations, more than the previous 10 presidents combined.
|
|
As President, Obama granted 1,715 commutations for non-violent drug offenders -- more than the past 12 presidents combined.
|
|
MORE each denied hundreds of clemency requests before issuing their first commutations and pardons, according to USA Today.
|
|
Yet with more than 10,000 clemency applications still waiting for resolution, Mr. Obama has issued only 248 commutations.
|
|
President Obama granted 209 commutations and 64 pardons on Tuesday as one of his final acts as president.
|
|
For some of the convicts, the commutations mean they will serve only half of their original prison sentences.
|
|
While that's more commutations than any president since Woodrow Wilson, thousands of petitions, like Johnson's, are still pending.
|
|
This week, Trump issued seven pardons and four commutations, including a number of controversial and high-profile figures.
|
|
Bush granted 12 pardons and two commutations during fiscal 2004 as he geared up for his reelection race.
|
|
The president on Tuesday doled out pardons and commutations to nearly a dozen individuals, including ex-Illinois Gov.
|
|
Hundreds of veterans gathered for commutations to mark key events in the operation, which started on 6 June 1944.
|
|
US presidents have long granted pardons or commutations to political allies or in cases taken up by their supporters.
|
|
Baseball star Willie McCovey was among one of the 273 commutations and pardons issued by President Obama on Tuesday.
|
|
The three pardons were among 36 pardons and 31 commutations that Brown issued on Friday, The Associated Press noted.
|
|
They can either grant pardons, which expunge the conviction entirely, or commutations, which lessen the length of the sentence.
|
|
The elected prosecutor in Seattle, Dan Satterberg, has won 21 commutations or resentencings for people serving life or decades.
|
|
That showed him the transactional benefit of Presidential pardons and commutations, and how they might be used going forward.
|
|
Some critics said the commutations were aimed at freeing up prison beds and clearing the way for the closing.
|
|
Memos going to the president sometimes highlighted how many of the applicants seeking pardons or commutations were from Arkansas.
|
|
Victoria Law, The Appeal: Perhaps most notably, the number of Cuomo commutations are small by his state's historical standards.
|
|
Even Republican governor George Pataki, who eliminated parole for violent felonies and reinstated the death penalty, issued 32 commutations.
|
|
On Tuesday, the White House announced 209 people, including Chelsea Manning and Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera, will have their sentences commuted, bringing President Obama's total number of commutations during his presidency to 1,385—more than the total number of commutations issued by the past 12 presidents combined, the White House reports.
|
|
Friday's commutations bring the total to 348, more than granted by the previous seven presidents combined, the White House said.
|
|
The number of commutations that Obama granted in August, 325, is the largest number ever granted in a single month.
|
|
Shortly after the commutations were announced, Obama took to his Facebook page to post about the inspiration for his action.
|
|
"This is a country that believes in second chances," Obama wrote on his Facebook page after the commutations were announced.
|
|
His 28503,22019 sentence commutations for drug offenses before he left office included a third who were serving a life sentence.
|
|
Pardongate: On Bill Clinton's last day in office in January 2001, he issued 140 pardons as well as several commutations.
|
|
Obama's decision came in a batch of 209 commutations and 64 pardons announced with four days left in his term.
|
|
Their release was conditional on the series of commutations and pardons (the Department of Justice) spoke to at the time.
|
|
Quasi-legal proceedings, reality-TV star-sponsored commutations, and unconstitutional pre-trial delays are not signs of a healthy system.
|
|
Trump stuns with audacity of pardons But Trump, brazen and unapologetic, announced a flurry of commutations and pardons on Tuesday.
|
|
In addition to the pardons and commutations above, Trump also gave clemency to a disgraced former Republican lobbyist, David Safavian.
|
|
But Trump did grant full pardons and commutations to other figures, the White House revealed in a statement later Tuesday.
|
|
In other words, not that long ago, commutations were much more commonplace than Cuomo is allowing them to be now.
|
|
President Obama ate lunch on Wednesday with seven former inmates who received commutations during his and the last two administrations.
|
|
After this review, Obama granted pardons or commutations to more than 1,900 people — the most of any president in decades.
|
|
The power to grant pardons and commutations is written into the US constitution as one of the president's clearest unilateral prerogatives.
|
|
I would love to see people like Alice Johnson or people in her position receive pardons or commutations of their sentence.
|
|
But when Obama announced the names of 330 commutations the day before his administration ended, Bergdahl's name was not among them.
|
|
President Barack Obama shortened the sentences of 214 federal prisoners on Monday — the biggest mass grant of presidential commutations in history.
|
|
In the first two years of the initiative, the administration received thousands of petitions for commutations but granted fewer than 200.
|
|
Presidents usually step up the pace of pardons and commutations in their final months in office, as the chart above shows.
|
|
He boasted about the amount of commutations he has issued as president in an interview with National Public Radio in July.
|
|
Mulroy tells PEOPLE commutations are something of a rarity in Tennessee, with less than 1 percent of all such requests granted.
|
|
As The Daily Dot notes, Obama has the power to commute Manning's sentences, and has granted 575 commutations during his presidency.
|
|
But these are mostly local and state crimes, and Trump's powers to grant pardons and commutations applies only to federal laws.
|
|
Until late last year, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, had pardoned five people in about five years and had given no commutations.
|
|
Jerry Brown continued his Christmas tradition of dispensing second chances to convicted felons, issuing 143 pardons and 131 commutations on Monday.
|
|
In the past year, Obama has granted clemency to 590 prisoners, the most commutations in any single year of US history.
|
|
As recently as a couple years ago, Obama was regarded as rather stingy when it came to issuing pardons and commutations.
|
|
By contrast, Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton issued no pardons or commutations in their first two years of office.
|
|
Mr. Obama has created a national monument in Maine, and on Monday he issued a new round of pardons and commutations.
|
|
And he has backed more clemency and commutations for offenders who have taken real steps to put their past behind them.
|
|
He said he would "absolutely" consider issuing mass commutations and pardons for federal marijuana offenses and touted his baby bonds proposal.
|
|
It encouraged prisoners whose drug sentences would be shorter under current law (and who met other criteria) to apply for commutations.
|
|
More people apply for commutations while they're in prison than apply for pardons after they've been released, especially since the Clinton administration.
|
|
Obama has granted 688 commutations this year, for a total so far of 872 during his presidency, which ends on Jan. 20.
|
|
Just in the past year, Obama has granted clemency to 2003 prisoners -- the most commutations in any single year of US history.
|
|
One Monday in December 2015, Byrd heard rumors that President Obama was scheduled to announce a round of pardons, commutations, and clemencies.
|
|
Obama has granted commutations to 1,385 federal inmates as president, more than the total number given by the past 12 presidents combined.
|
|
Don't give special commutations for people that do bad things because you don't feel like you want to look like you're slanted.
|
|
On top of applying the most commutations of any president in history, Obama's also the first post-American president we've ever had.
|
|
Kevin Stitt (R) said at a Friday press conference that the state is "implementing the will of the people" through these commutations.
|
|
The truth of the matter is that Trump's latest batch of pardons and commutations were not about his sympathy for nonviolent offenders.
|
|
MORE used executive orders, sentence commutations, and directives to his Department of Justice not to target low-level drug offenders for prosecution.
|
|
This includes taking steps to provide additional resources to the Pardons Office, expediting the commutations process and eliminating bureaucratic barriers to relief.
|
|
Our reporting shows that Mr. Trump's pardons and commutations were driven by friendship, fame, personal empathy and a shared sense of persecution.
|
|
Tuesday's pardons and commutations help normalize what is surely coming to his long-suffering loyalists after the 2020 election, if not sooner.
|
|
On Tuesday, the president granted pardons and commutations of sentences to 11 people, including junk bond king Michael Milken, ex-Illinois Gov.
|
|
On Tuesday, he handed out 11 pardons and commutations, including a handful of political allies and high-profile officials convicted of corruption.
|
|
Critics also have raised concerns over some of the pardons and commutations for people convicted of violent offenses, including murder and rape.
|
|
Manning's grant came in a batch of 209 commutations and 64 pardons, which were announced with four days left in Obama's presidency.
|
|
The board did not provide any further explanation, and Ms. Nirider said she was not aware of any eligibility requirements for commutations.
|
|
So it makes sense that a president who's talked about the need to reduce mass incarceration would use commutations as a tool.
|
|
White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said Monday that he expects Obama will issue even more grants of commutations and pardons before leaving office.
|
|
President Obama recently made history with the largest number of prison-sentence commutations (214) in a single day in more than a century.
|
|
Multiple states already have compassionate-release programs for elderly or dying prisoners; governors could fast-track pardon and commutations to accelerate the process.
|
|
The reasons for presidential pardons and commutations over the years have almost always been political and/or meant to send a grand message.
|
|
"What President Obama has done for commutations is unprecedented in the modern era," White House Counsel Neil Eggleston wrote in a blog post.
|
|
With 85,000 drug offenders in federal prisons, many deserving of consideration, the pace of commutations to date is encouraging but still quite modest.
|
|
Trump also granted commutations to Tynice Nicole Hall and Crystal Munoz, both of whom were given lengthy prison sentences for drug-related offenses.
|
|
It is unclear whether President-elect Donald J. Trump will continue the practice of using pardons and commutations to address the sentencing issue.
|
|
No thanks President Obama's been handing out commutations like bottles of water lately, but one inmate in Texas just said thanks, but no thanks.
|
|
White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said the commutations underscored the president's commitment to using his clemency authority to give deserving individuals a second chance.
|
|
Of the 214 commutations Obama granted Wednesday, 67 of the prisoners were facing life sentences and the vast majority imprisoned for nonviolent drug crimes.
|
|
According to the White House, Obama has granted a total of 673 commutations, which they say is more than the previous 10 presidents combined.
|
|
The latest round of commutations is part of Obama's effort to free prisoners serving lengthy sentences handed down during the government's war on drugs.
|
|
Trump pardoned both men without involving the Justice Department and its pardon attorney, the office that usually advises the president on pardons and commutations.
|
|
Gillespie's TV ad emphasis on immigration, crime, and commutations appears to have tipped the Trump base into Gillespie's column — assisted by Trump's supportive tweets.
|
|
If you want to read people debate the wisdom of the 11 specific pardons and commutations Trump issued yesterday, I've recommended several pieces below.
|
|
The presidential power to grant clemency is an issue that animated Trump earlier this summer, when he issued a series of pardons and commutations.
|
|
He has already issued more than 1,000 commutations — more than the number issued by the prior 11 presidents combined, according to the White House.
|
|
But commutations are harder to get: from the Carter administration to April 2014, only 126 prisoners got their sentences commuted, at an approval rate of .
|
|
Klobuchar's plan would tap into one of the president's few nearly absolute powers: the ability to grant pardons and commutations to any federal prison inmate.
|
|
That's why he has granted 184 commutations total -- more than the last five presidents combined -- and has issued 66 pardons over his time in office.
|
|
Pardons and commutations Obama action: Obama has reduced the sentences for more than 1,000 non-violent drug criminals and pardoned more than a hundred more.
|
|
That's why he has granted 184 commutations total – more than the last five presidents combined – and has issued 66 pardons over his time in office.
|
|
With 2.2 million Americans behind bars, the commutations Obama has granted are a drop in the bucket, especially when compared to those who've been denied.
|
|
Obama has cut short sentences for 944 people during his presidency – more than the last 11 presidents combined – with 760 receiving commutations in 85033 alone.
|
|
If Trump granted them all, he would still not surpass President Franklin Roosevelt's record of 3,307 pardons and commutations over nearly four terms in office.
|
|
Mr. Newsom's advisers are focusing on the Supreme Court's decision to block several pardons or commutations — though not for death row inmates — issued by Gov.
|
|
Those rejections were the first time in decades the court had blocked a governor's commutations, and Mr. Newsom has asked the court for an explanation.
|
|
During radio interviews this week, Mr. LePage suggested his push for commutations was not a sudden shift in his views on the criminal justice system.
|
|
On Tuesday, we saw the first principle of Trumpism in action when he issued a series of pardons and commutations that included former Illinois Gov.
|
|
Matt Bevin (R) issued a series of tweets late Friday defending himself amid scrutiny of hundreds of pardons and commutations he issued before leaving office.
|
|
In his final months, Clinton ultimately commuted the sentences of 29 drug offenders — with most of those commutations issued on his last day in office.
|
|
President Bill Clinton didn't give any pardons or commutations in fiscal 1996, though the year before that he granted 53 pardons and commuted three sentences.
|
|
But Trump senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has internally championed pardons and commutations, reportedly suggested pardoning Blagojevich would appeal to Democrats.
|
|
Despite the board's statement that the governor was not considering requests for commutations, Ms. Nirider insisted it was within the governor's rights to grant them.
|
|
Obama granted more commutations than any other president in U.S. history and, the White House said, surpassing the number granted by the past 13 presidents combined.
|
|
The key source of Enstar's positive operating performance is its ability to ultimately settle reserves below acquired fair value through both effective claims management and commutations.
|
|
President Obama has recently granted commutations of sentence to over 600 federal prisoners, nearly all of them serving very long terms for non-violent narcotics crimes.
|
|
It comes weeks after he handed out 214 commutations in what the administration said was the largest amount in a single day since at least 1900.
|
|
Obama announced Manning's grant in a batch of 209 commutations and 85033 pardons overall, which came as he finishes the last four days of his presidency.
|
|
Shortly after pardoning D'Souza, Trump mused to reporters about more possible pardons or sentence commutations for celebrity pals of his like Martha Stewart and Rod Blagojevich.
|
|
The administration got 10,000 applications, thanks in part to the lawyers' network (25 of the 61 newest commutations were prisoners represented by the pro bono lawyers).
|
|
In 6900, the President Elect and the Republican Congress may tear down most of what Obama has built, but pardons and sentence commutations cannot be revoked.
|
|
Obama has granted pardons and commutations to 214.4,28.1 inmates so far — the most of any president since Harry Truman in the late 210s and early '22015s.
|
|
The White House counsel, Neil Eggleston, said he expects Obama will continue to grant commutations through the end of his presidency, which ends on Jan. 20.
|
|
They were disappointed by the closure of a program at the end of the Obama administration, through which more than 1,700 inmates received pardons or commutations.
|
|
The letter comes after Trump wielded his presidential pardon power to grant a wave of seven pardons and four commutations in several highly politically sensitive cases.
|
|
It's easier to show mercy to nonviolent offenders, as President Barack Obama did in granting sentence commutations overwhelmingly to those convicted of low-level drug crimes.
|
|
BOSSIE: Well, you know, these are all just coming out, and some of these are just pardons that are being discussed or commutations that are being discussed.
|
|
Prisoners applying for commutations have to file their petitions while they're still in prison; if they're released before the commutation is processed, then their application is closed.
|
|
He called on federal inmates to submit applications for pardons and commutations, receiving as of December 22016 nearly 299,000 requests — more than the previous eight administrations combined.
|
|
As one of his final actions as commander-in-chief, Obama shortened her sentence — one of 1,715 commutations and 212 pardons granted by him during his term.
|
|
The commutations are part of Obama's push to reform the criminal justice system to reduce the number of people serving long sentences for non-violent drug offenses.
|
|
He'd also work to establish an independent clemency commission outside of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to increase commutations, and eliminate mandatory minimum sentences to reduce incarceration.
|
|
The commutations were the most ever performed in a single day, the White House said, and brought the total number of sentences reduced by Obama to 1,715.
|
|
Number of the day 214 The number of commutations granted by President Obama yesterday, the highest number granted on a single day in more than a century.
|
|
President Trump's sentence commutations – along with his restorative prison reforms and economic policies – will positively impact an entire generation of Americans subjected to judicial and economic injustices.
|
|
This latest round comes just two days after Obama doled out 85033 commutations and 64 pardons, including a shorter prison stay for former Army soldier Chelsea Manning.
|
|
President Donald Trump lashed out at Brown last March when the Democratic governor issued 56 pardons and 14 commutations, including five pardons to immigrants facing deportation orders.
|
|
President Obama's pardons and commutations to date show that he already conceives of his prerogative not merely as individual acts of compassion but in more systemic terms.
|
|
Crystal Munoz, Tynice Hall, and Judith Negron — women who have little in common with the likes of Michael Milken — were all granted commutations from long prison terms.
|
|
"I'm actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country," Trump said Tuesday, after setting off alarm bells with a flurry of pardons and commutations.
|
|
But with respect to Chelsea Manning, I looked at the particulars of this case the same way I have the other commutations and pardons that I've done.
|
|
And in his final week in office, Mr. Obama is likely to grant commutations to shorten the prison sentences of still more nonviolent drug offenders, officials said.
|
|
But the most high profile of Tuesday's pardons and sentence commutations was that of Blagojevich, whose blatant tone in the recordings permanently linked his name to corruption.
|
|
In some instances, the White House handed out pardons and commutations to reward staunch political supporters like conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza and former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.
|
|
Matt Bevin issued hundreds of pardons and commutations to people he said he would not hesitate to welcome as neighbors, co-workers or members of his church.
|
|
Pardons, commutations, Medals of Honor and other presidential gifts usually have a formalized process, with layers of staff review before the final list of grantees is chosen.
|
|
UPDATE: This story was updated Friday with new information on the number of pardons and commutations filed as it became available from the Kentucky Secretary of State.
|
|
This brought the number of commutations issued during his Administration to five hundred and sixty-two, a total higher than that of the previous nine Administrations combined.
|
|
In recent months, Obama has granted more commutations with conditions, requiring inmates to complete a drug program or serve more prison time—or both—before being released.
|
|
So even though pardons and commutations are given to individual people, it's arguably the most direct tool the president has to reduce mass incarceration if he so chooses.
|
|
Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama on Tuesday reduced the prison sentences of more than 100 Americans convicted of drug crimes, the second large batch of commutations this month.
|
|
Missouri's next governor would have other opportunities for reform: putting a moratorium on the death penalty, granting commutations or pardons and boosting pay and accountability for state police.
|
|
The action, which comes as Brown nears the end of his tenure a governor, brings his total to 283 commutations and 1,332 pardons, far surpassing his recent predecessors.
|
|
The White House says the commutations are a step toward instilling fairness in the criminal justice system, but insist that fully reforming sentencing laws will require congressional action.
|
|
"The commutations of these despicable and guilty individuals are consistent with the abolition of the death penalty in the State of Colorado," said Polis, a first-term Democrat.
|
|
Sheldon Whitehouse, the Justice Department said that Trump had used the office to review only six of the 22 pardons and commutations he had granted at that time.
|
|
As chairman of the state Board of Pardons, he has tried encouraging some inmates to seek commutations and pardons, promising them that they will get a fair hearing.
|
|
John Cornyn, R-Texas, this week said President Trump should consider pardoning the former CIA director and Army general, amid his spree of commutations over the last several weeks.
|
|
During his justification for pardoning Arpaio, Trump seemed to suggest his pardon was not scandalous compared to pardons and commutations by former presidents, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
|
|
The commutation was part of a larger effort that included 209 commutations and 64 pardons, issued just three days before President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to take office.
|
|
"The work we're doing with commutations is unprecedented and I have now commuted more sentences for nonviolent drug offenses than the last seven or eight president's combined," Obama said.
|
|
While Obama has been the most generous president in modern history when it comes to commutations, he has issued just 70 pardons during his seven-plus years in office.
|
|
The latest round of commutations is part of Obama's efforts to help those who have been hit with lengthy prison sentences in the government's decades-long war on drugs.
|
|
After the announcement of the new commutations, Mr. Obama met with several federal prisoners whose sentences had previously been commuted to discuss how effectively they had re-entered society.
|
|
"Commutations are typically granted to reflect evidence of extraordinary change in the offender," Mr. Polis said, noting that this was not the reason he was commuting the three sentences.
|
|
He is drawing anger from some of his fellow Republicans, who see the commutations as part of a political fight over a prison that Mr. LePage wants to close.
|
|
"I write to urgently request information about what role, if any, your office played in President Trump's decision to issue a series of controversial pardons and commutations," Leahy wrote.
|
|
All three men walked out of prison this week after Kentucky's outgoing governor, Matt Bevin, issued more than 400 pardons and commutations during the final days of his administration.
|
|
Prosecutor Rob Sanders of Kenton County told CNN on Friday that prosecutors across Kentucky have filed an open records request to receive the complete list of pardons and commutations.
|
|
The outgoing governor has now granted 1,332 pardons and 11 commutations during the last eight years -- the most of any governor in modern state history, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
|
|
The commutations stemmed from a measure voters passed in 2016 that made simple drug possession a misdemeanor and increased felony property crimes from $500 to $1,000, according to the Oklahoman.Gov.
|
|
Eventually, Obama got fed up and forced through over 1,700 commutations by cranking the broken machine harder and attempting to marshal an army of volunteer lawyers to advocate for petitioners.
|
|
At issue are scores of pardons and 419 commutations of sentences that Bevin, a Republican, filed as he left office last month following his failed re-election bid in November.
|
|
Perhaps most striking among the commutations was the one given to Ms. Clark, one of three people still in prison for the robbery in which two Nyack police officers, Sgt.
|
|
The reluctance to grant pardons makes even less sense than a reluctance to give out commutations, since the sentences have already been served and there is no public safety concern.
|
|
The pardons and commutations should be carefully monitored to make sure violent criminals are not slipping through the cracks but President Trump should follow President Obama's example in continuing this policy.
|
|
As of late December, nearly 14,000 applications for commutations (many of them submitted per the White House's 2014 request) were still pending, along with more than 2,23 applications for full pardons.
|
|
"We are confident that there will be many more commutations in the months" before Obama leaves office in January next year, Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general, said in a release.
|
|
The commutations are part of a White House push to bring existing sentences -- many given under the conditions of strict "mandatory minimums" no longer in place -- in line with current standards.
|
|
The president has mostly doled out commutations and pardons to people convicted of drug crimes who received lengthy mandatory minimum sentences under requirements that have since been scaled back by Congress.
|
|
" According to the Associated Press, more commutations will be announced Thursday, "though [White House] officials said those would focus on drug offenders and would not likely include any other famous names.
|
|
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama shortened the prison sentences for 102 convicts serving time for drug-related offenses in his latest round of commutations, the White House said on Thursday.
|
|
Matt Bevin issued hundreds of pardons and commutations of sentences in his final days in office after his November defeat to Democrat Andy Beshear, some of which are for violent offenses.
|
|
High-profile pardons and commutations Obama issued his splashiest grants of clemency on Tuesday when he reduced the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, who provided sensitive information to Wikileaks, and pardoned Gen.
|
|
The pardon attorney's office, which operates out of the Justice Department, is responsible for reviewing thousands of petitions for pardons and sentence commutations and for making recommendations for clemency to the president.
|
|
Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor who runs a commutations clinic at the University of St. Thomas, said the most controversial legal question is not the pardon itself, but what comes after.
|
|
The reduction in gun violence President Obama claims to desperately want comes from law enforcement and prosecution, not from political rhetoric, lectures and sentence commutations for federal firearm law offenders and felons.
|
|
"President Abraham Lincoln intervened in hundreds of military court-martial cases during the Civil War, granting many pardons and commutations, often against the advice of his cabinet and military leaders," Vokey said.
|
|
"From what we know of former Governor Bevin's extreme pardons and commutations, the Senate Republican majority condemns his actions as a travesty and perversion of justice," Mr. Stivers said in a statement.
|
|
The clemency grant, one of 209 sentence commutations and 19753 pardons Mr. Obama issued on Tuesday, served as an important counterweight to his administration's insistent pursuit of those who leaked government secrets.
|
|
"There are people who deserve commutations but won't get them from this president because he sees pardons as a way to undermine the rule of law, not to see justice done," Rep.
|
|
Factors at play The ability to grant pardons or commutations is one of the most unlimited of a president's constitutional powers, and there are no set laws in how they can be wielded.
|
|
"Presidents have traditionally started granting commutations and pardons relatively early in their presidency, and they did it on a fairly regular basis throughout the course of their [time in office]," he tells Broadly.
|
|
On Wednesday, Mr. Obama shortened the prison terms of 214 convicts, the largest number of commutations a U.S. leader has granted in a single day since at least 1900, the White House said.
|
|
Traditionally, the Justice Department's pardons office would make recommendations about pardons and commutations to the deputy attorney general, who would weigh in and then pass the department's final determinations to the White House.
|
|
Traditionally, the Justice Department's pardons office would make recommendations about pardons and commutations to the deputy attorney general, who would weigh in and then pass the department's final determinations to the White House.
|
|
The long-secret records include new information on some of the late-term pardons and commutations that created controversy, including a pair of pardons that followed intervention of one of Hillary Clinton's brothers.
|
|
Mr. Brown granted more than 1,000 pardons between 2011 and 2019, but several commutations were halted last year by the California Supreme Court in what amounted to a rare rebuke of executive power.
|
|
The White House has been trumpeting Mr. Obama's use of his clemency power in the last two years, especially his nearly 1,200 commutations of prison sentences, more than the last several presidents combined.
|
|
President Donald Trump announced a host of pardons and commutations on Tuesday, ranging from Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor jailed on corruption charges, to Bernie Kerik, the former New York police commissioner.
|
|
While it's extremely unlikely it's going to approve 10,000 applications for commutations between now and January 2017, it's entirely plausible that it will approve more than the 186 it did over Leff's tenure.
|
|
In January, the pardon attorney at the time, Deborah Leff, quit in a very public resignation after struggling to get the ball moving on as many commutations and pardons as she would have liked.
|
|
The group vets the applications, writes the petitions and sends them to the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney, which oversees all pardons and sentence commutations and makes recommendations for the president's approval.
|
|
The conservative, law-and-order state of Oklahoma is releasing 85033 people convicted of drug possession crimes from state prisons in what is among the largest single-day commutations of sentences in U.S. history.
|
|
Trump has yet to make expansive use of his clemency powers, which is in line with his recent predecessors, who granted few, if any, pardons and commutations in the opening periods of their presidencies.
|
|
One official said that there was a list of people Mr. Trump has said he would like to consider for pardons or commutations, but that Mr. Manafort's name had never been on the list.
|
|
Obama has now granted a total of 673 commutations during his presidency, more than the number granted by the 10 previous presidents combined, as he seeks to reform the criminal justice system, it said.
|
|
The recipients of Mr. Cuomo's commutations included Roy Bolus, 49, who was sentenced to 75 years to life for his secondary role in a drug deal that ended in the deaths of two men.
|
|
The medal is one of the few presidential designations that dispenses with the traditional layers of staff review that precede pardons, commutations or Medals of Honor, and instead reflects the commander in chief's whims.
|
|
Mr. Trump, who approved a slate of pardons and sentence commutations this week, told the crowd that he wanted to see the sentencing process play out but believed that Mr. Stone would be exonerated.
|
|
"This president has been willing to use his pardon power without regard to many of the conventions that have been put together to guide and advise a president on pardons and commutations," she said.
|
|
Still, in taking on claims of innocence alongside the commutations of low-level offenders and those serving overly harsh prison terms, Mr. Bevin was discounting the advice of some senior members of his administration.
|
|
Obama grants clemency to 231 individuals "I expect that the President will issue more grants of both commutations and pardons before he leaves office," he wrote in a blog post on the White House's website.
|
|
Obama plans to grant commutations throughout the rest of his presidency, White House counsel Neil Eggleston on a call with reporters, and administration officials are moving swiftly to go through the thousands of remaining petitions.
|
|
The president's power of clemency — which includes both officially absolving people with criminal convictions of their crimes (pardons) and reducing sentences of people currently incarcerated (commutations) — is established in the Constitution, and it's very broad.
|
|
And while Trump won't be able to reverse Obama's pardons and commutations -- those moves, unlike his executive actions, are without question permanent -- they do illustrate the President's limitations in executing his last-minute legacy push.
|
|
Both pardons, which restore various rights taken away by the criminal conviction and are usually granted after a sentence is completed, and commutations, which shorten a sentence being served, go through the same bureaucratic maze.
|
|
Despite the relatively high number of commutations that Mr. Obama has now granted, there are still more than 9,000 pending commutation cases, many of the sort singled out in the 2014 initiative as potentially worthy.
|
|
His record is roughly in keeping with the last three presidents, Barack Obama, Mr. Bush and Bill Clinton, all of whom issued no pardons or commutations in their first year and a half in office.
|
|
The papers also show the sensitivities of Bill Clinton and his aides to ensuring that pardons and commutations for the politically connected were made public along with similar actions for folks who lacked such ties.
|
|
As recently as last week, Kushner was behind a flurry presidential pardons and commutations issued that included Tynice Nichole Hall, an African American woman who served 14 years in prison on non-violent drug charges.
|
|
Charles' case is not as glamorous as Martha Stewart and won't fire up the base as much as D'Souza, but it will have a far greater impact on the American community than either of those commutations.
|
|
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama commuted prison sentences for 61 non-violent drug offenders on Wednesday and the White House said he hopes to issue more pardons and commutations during his remaining months in office.
|
|
But the visit also highlights the highly irregular process that has led to the majority of Trump's acts of clemency -- commutations and pardons secured only by virtue of star power and personal connections with the President.
|
|
Mr. Brown, who is serving the final 12 months of his second stint as governor, has granted 1,115 pardons and 51 commutations since taking office in 2011, Evan Westrup, the governor's press secretary said on Saturday.
|
|
"There are people who deserve commutations but won't get them from this president because he sees pardons as a way to undermine the rule of law, not to see justice done," Beyer said in a tweet.
|
|
With the latest round of commutations, President Obama has pulled ahead of his predecessors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in using executive authority to pardon former prisoners and shorten (or commute) the sentences of current ones.
|
|
Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the main exile group the World Uyghur Congress, said news of the commutations was a "political propaganda tool" to cover up the government's use of the term extremist to repress the Uighur people.
|
|
Obama looks beyond commutations in justice reform bid Along with the new rules for solitary confinement, the White House said Obama was adopting a new set of principles that would govern how federal corrections facilities house prisoners.
|
|
Andrew Speno, the state director of Oklahoma for Right on Crime, a group at the forefront of conservative efforts to reduce incarceration rates in the state, praised the commutations but said officials need to do much more.
|
|
Legal proceedings against those accused of being involved in the bombings have resulted in more than 100 convictions, most of which are still winding their way through the legal system because of appeals and commutations of sentences.
|
|
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama shortened the prison sentences for 98 convicts serving time for drug-related offenses in his latest round of commutations, including for 42 people serving life sentences, the White House said on Thursday.
|
|
While Obama gets credit for highlighting a problem in the law and may have granted as many commutations as the last 12 presidents combined, he says, he's also denied as many as the last 12 presidents combined too.
|
|
Chelsea Manning, now aged 29, was the most prominent name on a list of presidential pardons and commutations, most of which involved those serving long terms for drug offences, issued by Barack Obama in the final hours of his presidency.
|
|
At the same time, the number of inmates who have applied for pardons or commutations has increased sharply in the final year of Obama's tenure, creating a backlog of requests for Obama's team to process before he leaves office in January.
|
|
As Mars resumes its forward motion, think about how you can be more effective in your commutations, and meditate on the difference between confidently stating your needs and setting your boundaries versus being cruel or even giving the silent treatment.
|
|
Speaking from the White House at a joint press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, Trump read off a list of past pardons and commutations that presidents have taken heat for, including Obama's handling of Chelsea Manning and Oscar Lopez Rivera.
|
|
A senior administration official said the 120-day delay was part of a standard transition period for commutations to time served, and was designed to allow for such steps as finding a place for Ms. Manning to live after her release.
|
|
The idea of blanket commutations is being pushed by a coalition of criminal-justice reform advocates, including former judges and prosecutors, who urged the president in a letter last week to use his clemency power aggressively while he still can.
|
|
The president said publicly this week that he hasn't given it any thought, but a round of high-profile pardons and commutations this week was seen by many as a message intended for Stone and other Trump associates facing prison time.
|
|
Asked at a White House news conference about broad criticism of the pardon, including from some in his own party, Trump said Arpaio had not been treated fairly, and he criticized previous U.S. presidents for pardons and commutations of their own.
|
|
President George W. Bush granted 189 pardons and 11 commutations, including reducing the prison term for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators in the probe of the leak of the name of a CIA operative.
|
|
It turned out that using the pardon power to grant big batches of commutations wasn't just a matter of who was at the head of the pardon office, but how willing Department of Justice leadership and the White House were to take risks.
|
|
Here's an idea: If President Trump really wants to make a point about the failings of his opponents, he should go big and grant commutations to the thousands of deserving petitioners who were denied or not ruled upon during the Obama administration.
|
|
But it adds to the unusual string of pardons and commutations that Trump has carried out since he took office last year — typically to friends or allies or, as seems to be true in Kardashian's case, causes embraced by friends and allies.
|
|
But if Trump does go through with it, it could serve another purpose — further normalizing the granting of pardons and commutations to Trump's friends, so Trump can eventually reward his associates who have run afoul of the law but remained "loyal" to him.
|
|
Under Mr. Trump, the Justice Department has pulled back from his predecessor's investigations of police abuse and misconduct; resumed the use of private, for-profit prisons; and stopped granting commutations to low-level drug offenders who have spent years or decades behind bars.
|
|
The wave of seven pardons and four commutations, some of which Trump has been considering for years, came amid a post-impeachment flurry of presidential prerogative, from ridding his team of aides he deemed disloyal to flagrantly inserting himself into Justice Department matters.
|
|
One day after President Donald Trump pardoned or granted commutations to nine disgraced public figures who were convicted of corruption-related crimes, one of his spokespeople went on Fox News and claimed the move was rooted in principled opposition to harsh sentencing.
|
|
But unless the president grants several dozen of commutations every day next year – highly unlikely given the glacial process of countless levels of review before the president signs off —most of those applicants will remain behind bars when the he leaves office.
|
|
White House officials say there is likely to be at least one last batch of commutations as the president seeks to work through a backlog of cases involving long sentences of low-level drug offenders, most of whom are young minority men.
|
|
Trump could carve out some excuses for his past pardons and commutations (such as his argument that Arpaio and D'Souza were treated unfairly due to political bias), but the Johnson move is a naked attempt to reward a perceived political ally, Kardashian.
|
|
Earlier this year the White House said the number of inmates who have applied for pardons or commutations has increased sharply in the final year of Obama's tenure, creating a backlog of requests for his team to process before he leaves office in January.
|
|
"Today, the federal prison population is about 200,000, so if Obama was going to equal what his predecessors did a 100 years ago, I would argue that he would have had to have granted about 2,000 commutations a year throughout the course of his presidency."
|
|
The governor, Kevin Stitt, ordered the commutations, and all but 65 of the 527 inmates walked out of prison on Monday; the remainder were being detained because of issues with their immigration status or because they face charges in other states, according to Oklahoma officials.
|
|
"While Democrats would be supportive of commutations for Mainers serving longer sentences than they should, there must be a transparent process for granting them," said Charlotte Warren, a Democratic state representative who is the chairwoman of a committee on criminal justice and public safety.
|
|
"The White House is moving to take more direct control over pardons and commutations, with Trump aiming to limit the role of the Justice Department in the clemency process as he weighs a flurry of additional pardon announcements," Toluse Olorunnipa, Dawsey and Neena Satija report.
|
|
Granting commutations to these four men would log into history the Obama administration's commitment to healing the political wounds of the past and begin a process that will result in a society committed to rehabilitation, forgiveness, and reconciliation, rather than racial disparate treatment, retribution, and punishment.
|
|
In the last few rounds of commutations, Cook said one inmate was the leader of a drug ring that trafficked in over 28500 tons of cocaine, six had previously been convicted of being drug kingpins and another had been convicted of possessing a sawed off shot gun.
|
|
The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Donald W. Lemons, noted that none of the 71 preceding governors had issued a clemency order of any kind — including pardons, reprieves, commutations and restoration orders — to a group of unnamed felons without considering the nature of their crimes.
|
|
Consider that Trump — arguably the most personally corrupt president in American history — pardoned or granted commutations to a veritable who's who of corrupt public figures in the immediate aftermath of an impeachment trial where one of his central defenses was that he's a staunch opponent of corruption.
|
|
Our White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, who covered the story, offered this interpretation of Trump's pardons and commutations: Trump's decision to commute the sentence of Rod Blagojevich and to pardon Bernard Kerik and Michael Milken came after he was lobbied by friends and allies of those men.
|
|
"We hope to see him use this executive power to grant more commutations and clemencies in due course for any of the thousands of deserving individuals who are neither rich, nor famous, nor connected," said Holly Harris, president and executive director of the bipartisan Justice Action Network.
|
|
Following Wednesday's White House meeting on clemency and prison reform, a few of the attendees had an impromptu discussion with President Trump about potential commutations for Chris Young and Matthew Charles, two prisoners for whom Kim Kardashian West has advocated, Judge Kevin Sharp, who attended both meetings, tells Axios.
|
|
The lower 6.7% ROE posted through the first six months of 2016 reflects the seasonality of run-off, with the majority of reserve development and commutations occurring during the fourth quarter, as this coincides with reserve reviews and efforts by companies to finalize deals prior to year-end.
|
|
After establishing the categories of prisoners eligible to receive sentencing reductions, the President could direct the chief federal prosecutors in each jurisdiction to send him a list of the top five or ten percent of serious convicts in those eligible groups, and he could exempt them from commutations.
|
|
WASHINGTON — Amid a series of high-profile pardons and commutations by President Trump in recent months, his personal lawyers cautioned against even considering clemency for former aides under investigation by the special counsel until the inquiry was over, one of the lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said on Thursday.
|
|
The five immigrants were among 56 pardons and 14 commutations Mr. Brown granted on Friday — Good Friday and the start of Passover — to those who have been out of custody for at least 10 years and have exhibited "exemplary behavior" after their convictions, the governor's press office said.
|
|
Despite commuting on Wednesday the sentences of 61 federal prisoners convicted of drug and firearm crimes — bringing his total number of commutations to 248, more than that of his six predecessors combined — he is far from accomplishing the ambitious goals his administration publicly set out two years ago.
|
|
He has also pushed for criminal justice reform, becoming the first sitting president to visit a federal prison when he traveled to El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma, and setting a record for clemencies -- granting pardons and commutations to more than 1,300 people so far -- many of them drug offenders.
|
|
Booker's campaign went on to cite precedent for using the president's clemency power, noting instances such as President Kennedy's use of commutations for individuals sentenced to mandatory minimum penalties under the 1956 Narcotics Control Act and President Ford's offer of amnesty to those who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.
|
|
The lower 7.7% ROE posted through the first three months of 2017 reflects the seasonality of runoff, with the majority of reserve development and commutations occurring during the second half of the year, as this coincides with reserve reviews and efforts by companies to finalize deals prior to year-end.
|
|
WASHINGTON — President Obama is on pace to be the first president in decades to leave office with a federal prison population that is smaller than when he was sworn in, a reflection of eight years of liberal criminal justice policies, historically low crime rates and an aggressive use of presidential commutations.
|
|
But Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that advocates reduced incarceration, said that with some exceptions — such as Mike Huckabee, who pardoned or commuted more than 1,000 people during his 10 years as the governor of Arkansas — commutations by governors are not substantially common.
|
|
That same day, Trump pardoned or granted commutations of nine former public figures or billionaires who were convicted of corruption-related crimes — a move seemingly aimed at dismissing the sort of obstruction of justice and financial wrongdoing he's been implicated in as well as laying the groundwork for pardoning or commuting the sentence of Stone.
|
|
The courts have made clear over time that presidents can pardon people before they've even been convicted of any crime; that any federal offense can be pardoned; and that presidents are given broad leeway in the type of relief they can grant — from temporary reprieves to full pardons to commutations to broad-based grants of amnesty.
|
|
A 2628 ProPublica investigation found that even when applicants had committed similar crimes, "White criminals seeking presidential pardons over the past decade have been nearly four times as likely to succeed" and "Blacks have had the poorest chance of receiving the president's ultimate act of mercy…" In executive commutations, another form of clemency, race matters too.
|
|
"By having some commutations and dialogue, we are able to have a ceasefire and it is going to go on for a while and frankly, we are working on a second ceasefire in a very rough part of Syria," Trump said Thursday during a news conference in Paris after fielding a question on the US' dialogue with Russia.
|
|
The Pew Research Center has a wonderful chart to prove it (which excludes Gerald Ford's clemency actions for Vietnam War draft dogers since they were done through nontraditional means): As the chart shows, Obama has granted clemency to 21986,280 people, mostly nonviolent drug offenders, over eight years — a total that includes 2500,023 commutations (which shorten sentences) and 70 pardons.
|
|
Commutations In his final year in the White House, President Barack ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaDick Cheney to attend fundraiser supporting Trump reelection: report Forget conventional wisdom — Bernie Sanders is electable 2020 Democrats fight to claim Obama's mantle on health care MORE used his executive powers to commute more than 1,85033 federal prison sentences, more than the last 11 presidents combined.
|
|
Then, in the hours following Trump's string of pardons and commutations, the Daily Beast reported that family members of one of the men Trump pardoned, Paul Pogue, donated lavishly to his fundraising committee and campaign in the months leading up to the pardon — a chain of events that appears to be about as corrupt as it gets.
|
|
With only weeks left in office, Mr. Obama should consider a bolder approach: blanket commutations for those inmates still serving time under an old law that punished possession or sale of crack cocaine far more harshly than powder cocaine — a meaningless distinction that sent disproportionate numbers of young black and Latino men to prison for decades.
|
|
President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE has drawn criticism for issuing a string of pardons and commutations since taking office, an executive power traditionally used near the end of a presidency.
|
|
It seems clear the President Barack ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaDick Cheney to attend fundraiser supporting Trump reelection: report Forget conventional wisdom — Bernie Sanders is electable 85003 Democrats fight to claim Obama's mantle on health care MORE used the constitutional power of the president to dole out a record number of commutations and pardons that were motivated by his extremely progressive ideology.
|
|
WHITE HOUSE MOVES TO CONTROL PARDON PROCESS: "The White House is moving to take more direct control over pardons and commutations, with [Trump] aiming to limit the role of the Justice Department in the clemency process as he weighs a flurry of additional pardon announcements, according to people familiar with the matter," our colleagues Toluse Olorunnipa, Josh Dawsey and Neena Satija report.
|
|
Others went to Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who became a hero of anti-immigrant conservatives, and Kristian Saucier, a former Navy sailor whose conviction for taking souvenir photographs on a nuclear submarine was cited as an example of double standards compared to Hillary Clinton's exoneration by the F.B.I. In April alone, Mr. Trump denied 82 requests for pardons and 98 requests for commutations that came through the pardon attorney's office.
|
|
MSNBC host Joe ScarboroughCharles (Joe) Joseph Scarborough Scarborough blasts Trump pardons, says 'political hacks' and 'co-conspirators' will be next Scarborough: Media 'parroting' Trump economy when Obama's 'was much stronger' Scarborough: Trump would arrest his media critics 'tomorrow' if he could MORE is blasting President TrumpDonald John TrumpFed saw risks to US economy fading before coronavirus spread quickened Pro-Trump super PAC hits Biden with new Spanish-language ad in Nevada Britain announces immigration policy barring unskilled migrants MORE's Tuesday pardons and commutations, saying that the president will pardon his own "political hacks" and "co-conspirators" next.
|
|
Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersBiden leads Sanders by single digits in South Carolina: poll Pro-Trump super PAC hits Biden with new Spanish-language ad in Nevada Biden will go after Bloomberg, Sanders at Las Vegas debate, aides say MORE (I-Vt.) slammed President TrumpDonald John TrumpFed saw risks to US economy fading before coronavirus spread quickened Pro-Trump super PAC hits Biden with new Spanish-language ad in Nevada Britain announces immigration policy barring unskilled migrants MORE over a handful of pardons and commutations he announced Tuesday, saying the move was indicative of a criminal justice system that goes easy on wealthy and powerful people.
|
|