#Commutations and Pardons

[youthchronical]

Judge Pushes Back on Justice Dept.’s Broad View of Jan. 6 Pardons

In the past few weeks, the Justice Department under President Trump has taken an expansive view of the pardons he issued to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Department officials, after initially concluding that the pardons covered only crimes that were committed at the Capitol on the day of the attack, have now decided that Mr. Trump’s…

[evelyn-and-art]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ed Pilkington at The Guardian:

Joe Biden has carried out the largest act of presidential clemency on a single day in modern US history, commuting the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardoning 39 Americans convicted of non-violent crimes. In a statement issued on Thursday, the White House said that Biden’s sweeping act of clemency was designed to “help reunite families, strengthen communities, and reintegrate individuals back into society”. The almost 1,500 commutations ordered by the president all relate to people who were released from prisons and placed in home confinement during the Covid pandemic. Thousands of prisoners were released to their homes as an emergency measure under the Cares Act to prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus through federal prisons. Each individual included in the new commutations had been serving their sentences at home for at least a year and had shown they were reunited with their families and were committed to rehabilitation, the White House said. “These commutation recipients have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance,” they continued. The commutations come at a time when Republicans in Congress have been pressing to send thousands of federal prisoners on home release back behind bars. Criminal justice reformers have protested that the home release program has been highly successful, with a rate of new offending at a mere fraction of the overall recidivism rate in federal prisons. Under the commutations, the almost 1,500 Americans will retain their convictions but have their sentences reduced. The 39 people pardoned by Biden have had their guilty verdicts wholly erased.

The White House said the 39 were all individuals convicted of non-violent crimes, including drug offenses. Among them were a woman who led emergency response teams during natural disasters; a church deacon who had worked as an addiction and youth counsellor; a doctoral student in molecular biosciences; and a decorated military veteran.

President Joe Biden (D) issues around 1,500 sentence commutations and 39 pardons of non-violent crimes in the largest single-acts of clemency.

[breezingby]

The President Who Has No Concept of Justice

Do You want to know WHO Crooked Joe Biden Pardoned?!!! Watch this video. 

Those of you that are So Proud of Biden...I imagine that you’re just going to ignore this video, but if you Do watch it and See Who he Pardons, it’ll even piss YOU Off !

Joe Biden has pardoned 4 times More people than Even Obama...!

[doueverwonder]

following the Indiana absorbing Illinois counties thing and Pritzker keeps trash talking Indiana, and like listen up buddy it might be a shitty conservative state but it's MY shitty conservative state and u can shut the fuck up.

[drunk-on-starlight]

I'm gonna be honest, I didn't expect Peltier to be commuted ever.

[memenewsdotcom]

Biden commutes 1,500 sentences

[youthchronical]

Trump Pardons Ex-Tennessee State Senator Imprisoned for Campaign Fraud

President Trump has pardoned an imprisoned former Tennessee state senator who was two weeks into a 21-month sentence for his role in a campaign finance fraud scheme. Inmate records show that the former lawmaker, Brian Kelsey, a Republican, was released from a minimum-security satellite camp at FCI Ashland in Kentucky on Tuesday, the same day, his lawyer said, that he received a clemency letter…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Brandi Buchman at HuffPost:

President Donald Trump, free from the burden of his own indictment for allegedly conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election, announced on Monday that he would pardon people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. While signing a series of executive orders at the White House hours after his inauguration, Trump said he was pardoning about 1,500 defendants charged in the attack on the U.S. Capitol and issuing six commutations. “So this is Jan. 6,” he said as he received the executive order. “These are the hostages. Approximately 1,500 were pardoned. Full pardon. You have about six commutations in there, but we are doing further research.” “We hope they come out tonight, frankly,” he added. In the leadup to his second administration, Trump was cagey about how far he would go with clemency for some of the more than 1,580 individuals charged with various crimes connected to Jan. 6. Approximately 1,100 defendants have been sentenced so far, and arrests are ongoing. According to the Department of Justice, as of Jan. 4, 608 people were charged with assaulting police, 174 were convicted of using a deadly and dangerous weapon, and at least 180 were charged with entering the Capitol carrying a dangerous or deadly weapon. Those weapons included guns, pepper spray, axes, hatchets, swords, knives and a variety of makeshift weapons transported from home or made on the fly from items such as metal barriers, flagpoles, sticks and police shields. Just under 100 people were charged with destruction of property. According to the Architect of the U.S. Capitol, only a small fraction of the roughly $3 million in damage was ever repaid.

Treasonous insurrection-inciting felon “President” Donald Trump issues pardons and 6 commutations to nearly all of the the violent cop-injuring domestic terrorists who stormed the capitol in protest of the 2020 election results due to his lies on January 6th, 2021.

See Also:

The Guardian: Donald Trump issues 1,500 pardons over January 6 Capitol attack

NCRM: Trump Expected to Grant Clemency to Almost All J6 Criminals, Including Violent Felons

[wilwheaton]

President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and is pardoning 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. It’s the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.

Biden commutes roughly 1,500 sentences in biggest single-day act of clemency

Fuck yes. MORE! MORE! DO MORE!

[tousey-mousey]

"she only got caught when she went on a long vacation and someone as acting comptroller noticed the massive fraud and quietly got it to the fbi."

Fun fact: this is the reason why there's a policy minimum on how many vacations a person working in banking can take. While it's not a law per se, banks know that if they didn't enforce it internally then it would become a law pretty quickly, so it's close to a law. Besides, it makes them money (or, stops them losing them money).

The thing is, fraud is hard when it's not hidden. Even simple fraud leaves tracks, and those tracks tend to be pretty major. If you're redirecting cheques or embezzling from accounts, there are specifically systems in place to spot when that happens and they're very, VERY good at spotting it. So you need to conceal it in something that looks innocuous.

Generally, you conceal it by shunting it to a different account, and then shunting THAT to a NEW account, and you keep going until eventually you're at your own account. But when you do, you might leave smaller ripples but you leave them a lot more widely. Now, you have to cover up THOSE ripples, and you can try to do it by diffusing that, too.

It's actually not all that difficult... while you're there to babysit it. These systems can't really be automated, they need an intelligent hand behind the wheel to steer them all. Fraudsters tend to appear, in the office, like the most diligent and hardworking of employees. They never make waves, they never cause anyone trouble that would make them look into what they were doing. They are never SO perfect that they'd win an award, but usually they'd be the runner-up. They're never late, always early, and while their bosses say "she's SUCH a hard worker!" she's busily work hard at digging her way through stealing money out of the pension fund and covering it up by stealing money from the widows & orphans fund and the sick puppy sanctuary to pay back the loss.

And, they get REALLY good at it. It becomes incredibly efficient.

While they're there.

Because it needs to be babysat.

So, embezzlers tend not to take vacation. They can't, because if they do then their system stops working and they NEED the system to work so that it doesn't leave gaping holes in accounts. They stack up vacation days, and they try to take advantage of the fact that nobody WANTS their employees to take vacation.

Right?

So, banks often FORCE vacation days for anyone involved in processing accounts in any way. You're often required to take a minimum of one week off a year, as a block, because systems can usually survive a day or two but rarely can they go a week without being noticed. It works SHOCKINGLY well.

im on the wikipedia page for dixon, illinois as im looking for more details about this pardoned criminal. i had a wonderful time reading about a 19th century bridge collapse and that deserves its own post but also

personally, i would reverse the order of these two clauses. for one, it's funnier and paints a better picture and for two, she used that money to buy the horses.

[kaelio]

Hello everyone, I'm here today to engage in the absolutely thankless task of defending the hell out of this sentence getting commuted.

First things first:

I am not a prison abolitionist (this is important)

This former judge is one of the worst scumbags alive. Basically, he sent kids to juvie/prison in return for kickbacks.

So why did I want his sentence commuted? Oh, me? I didn't.

But this was part of a package of commutations requested by prison abolitionists. Yes, they asked for this, even spent hundreds of thousands on advertisements to demand it. Basically, Biden commuted the sentences of 1,500 people who were on "compassionate release", meaning they were already living at home. This is mostly just really old/sick people.

Biden didn't commute this guy's sentence as such, he commuted the sentences of a type of person out on compassionate release and didn't take the judge out of the pile. He didn't say, "except, not him".

This judge (scumbag) served 13 of his 16 years, but in 2020 was sent home because he was in such poor health it was assumed Covid would kill him. He's been at home ever since.

Now, this is important. This man cannot commit this offense again. He's not a judge any more! So recidivism is impossible. He cannot re-offend. So, in his case, prison can't be for rehabilitation or in any way to make sure he doesn't do it again. He can't! Never could have. The only real reason he was there was to punish him, which is fine. Personally, I'm fine with prisons being solely for punishment. But are you? Is that what you've been saying? Has that been your stance, that prisons are to punish people?

"But this guy was especially bad." Oh, so... mercy for people who didn't do really bad things? Then you're not getting any of these commutations. Because if you were in federal prison for long enough to qualify to be out on compassionate release, you did something really bad! Biden also pardoned everyone in federal prison for non-violent marijuana charges and you could count the number of people on your fingers because you don't actually get sent to federal prison over minor drug crimes.

Let's make it clear: "Mercy and leniency, but only for people who I define as innocent" means.... no mercy and no leniency. And you can be on board with that. You can be vengeful or a revanchist or bitter and brutal at heart; you're totally allowed. But then don't pretend you're not! In fact, that's the heart of Trumpism: there are those for whom laws should protect but not bind, and for others laws which should bind but not protect. (Or, as Óscar Benavides put it: "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.") If your stance is just "good things for people I like and agree with, and bad things for those I don't" then you just have a different sense of who should be punished or die. But your thinking is fundamentally the same. Have you had a consistent stance about vigilante killing lately? Let me ask, who's allowed to decide among the populace who may live and who must die?

It's very unlikely anyone will ever again be as generous and compassionate as Biden has been with his powers. Because when he is, when he actually does it, when he's kind down to his very soul, you fucking hate it. That's what 2024 was; the revealed preferences election. You didn't want to pay people a living wage to deliver your burrito, you don't actually want people let out of jail, and you think capital punishment is fine as long as the executioner was hot.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

End-stage capitalism

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in BLOOMINGTON TODAY (Apr 4), and in PITTSBURGH on May 15. More tour dates here.

Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually fail, torn apart by its own contradictions. He called the bourgeoisie, who epitomized these contradictions, capitalism's "grave diggers":

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels marvel at capitalism's adaptability, its ability to reinvent itself in the face of seemingly terminal crises and emerge in a new form. For nearly two centuries, Marxists have treated capitalism as an intermediate stage between feudalism and socialism – a lengthy, but still impermanent, regime whose purpose was to produce the systems of plenty that socialism would deliver to democratic control.

But as capitalism lurched from crisis to crisis, some Marxists speculated that capitalism would give way to something even worse. In 2023, Yanis Varoufakis proposed that capitalism might end up being a transitional phase between feudalism and another kind of feudalism – technofeudalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

But Trump's disastrous policies – tariffs, suspension of the rule of law, pointless military expansionism – doesn't serve Varoufakis's technofeudalism or any other kind of feudalism. As Hamilton Nolan writes, Trump represents a rupture of the customarily unshakable class solidarity of the wealthy. Trump's policies are not good for business. Trump is going to make America much, much poorer – and since the vast majority of American wealth is held by a tiny minority of very rich people, any program that vaporizes an appreciable fraction of American wealth will make a lot of rich people a lot poorer.

Hamilton Nolan wrote about this a couple days ago, enumerating all the ways that Trump – who LARPed a TV businessman – is extremely bad for business:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/divergence-from-the-interests-of

Gutting state capacity

As Nolan writes, there are plenty on the right who don't care about the idea that public education produces the skilled workers needed to run and expand the economy, and who believe that paving half the national parks and putting a $500/day admission price on the remainder will suit them just fine. But even the most hardcore plutocrat needs a functional immigration system so they can source workers who can do the jobs Americans won't – or can't – do. You can't be a finance guy in a country with a collapsed, corrupt Treasury Department that periodically reaches into institutional bank accounts and drains them of millions in pursuit of "obscure witch-hunts":

“stupidly breaking the parts of the government that allow our financial markets to function smoothly with no apparent plan" is not “populism” any more than a bite from an alligator is a kiss

Ending the rule of law

Anyone who claims to love "free markets" loves the rule of law. The predictability of a laws-based society is a necessary precondition for capital formation, long-term investing, and the use of contracts to coordinate business within a transparent, known set of rules.

Trump's lavish corruption – his crypto companies (which someone called "a tipjar for the Oval Office"), his sale of commutations and pardons to flagrant criminals, and his purging of Democrats within the DoJ to create space for "buffoons" who run his witch hunts – all offer good reason for investors to stay the hell out of America, and for businesses to get the hell out of the country:

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5182515-senate-democrats-complaint-ed-martin/

The spectacle of the top executives of world's most powerful multinationals openly paying bribes to Trump, while seated at Trump's own members' club, makes an eloquent case for seeking your business opportunities in another country – practically any other country:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/05/trump-dinner-mar-a-lago

Then there's Trump's interference in the Fed, "endangering financial markets for short term political gain":

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-bid-to-control-fed-puts-us-economy-at-risk-by-kenneth-rogoff-2025-01

And finally, there's his defiance of federal court orders, and his attacks on law firms that employ lawyers who had the temerity to sue him. As Nolan writes, "This is not good for business." Sure, it's grimly satisfying to think about all those rich fools who howled because Biden had the temerity to suggest modest tax hikes and improvements to labor law now having to watch as "the world’s most sophisticated corporate legal regime [is replaced] with a system in which you must grovel at his toes in a ridiculous red hat in order to get anything done."

Military adventures

Trump is apparently going to go to war with Iran, Canada, Denmark, Mexico, and several other countries to be determined at a later date. Sure, America's military spending is higher than all the rest of the world's combined, but getting involved in several wars at once is – once again – not good for business. For one thing, he's going to kill Boeing, Lockheed, and all the other US-based arms dealers that rely on a friendly relationship with America's erstwhile allies for billions of dollars per year in business. Things are no better for the companies that do other kinds of business with the countries America is apparently on the brink of war with. This kind of "Hitlerian" program of economic growth was a failure in the previous century, and it will fail again:

Did Hitler’s wild invasions ultimate make Germany richer? No. They started a world war. And, no matter what anyone tells you, world war is not good for business.

Tariffs

Finally, there's Trump's deranged tariff plan. As David Dayen writes for The American Propsect, these aren't really tariffs at all – they're sanctions, punishments visited upon every country in the world (even uninhabited islands!) for a bunch of imaginary crimes:

https://prospect.org/economy/2025-04-03-theyre-not-tariffs-theyre-sanctions/

Trump's tariffs make no sense as an economic policy, but they are familiar to anyone who's spent time around organized crime (like, say, Trump):

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910/

Dayen likens Trump's approach to "a mob boss moving into town and sending his thugs to every business on Main Street, roughing up the proprietors and asking for protection money so they don’t get pushed out of business." Trump's demands – such as they are – include forcing America's trading partners to do away with their privacy, food safety and antitrust laws:

https://tacd.org/wp-content/uploads/TACD-Statement-Tariffs-3-April.pdf

Even if it was worth it for other countries to dismantle their laws to enjoy continued access to US markets (it isn't), no one trusts that giving in to Trump means that he'll carry out his end of the bargain. As Brad DeLong reminds us, Trump personally negotiated the USMCA terms that Canada and Mexico have been living under since he last left office, and those are the two countries he's most pissed off at:

https://braddelong.substack.com/p/draft-mar-a-lago-discord

This isn't capitalism – it's gangsterism. It's a system that will annihilate trillions of dollars in value to put billions of dollars in the pockets of Trump and a few of his cronies – at the expense of all the other rich people.

Nolan concludes that Trump is "insane" – that his actions are irrational, disconnected from reality, impossible to understand. For Nolan, the question isn't "What is Trump trying to accomplish?" It's "how has this insane man managed to gain control of the government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation?"

He's got a hell of an answer, too:

That, my friends, is the unfortunate outcome of an economic system that has so profoundly failed to enforce economic equality, and a political system that so profoundly failed to protect its democracy from the influence of capital that it allowed itself to be totally captured by extreme lunatics backed by extreme wealth.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/04/anything-that-cant-go-on/#forever-eventually-stops

[theonion]

Upon receiving the news that his name had somehow been included in an executive order granting clemency to nearly 1,600 rioters, Mark David Chapman reportedly decided to just go with it Monday when he was pardoned alongside the Jan. 6 defendants. “Well, sure, I guess I’ll just say here that I’ve been held hostage by a crooked justice system, and, I guess, I thank President Trump for his support,” said John Lennon’s 69-year-old assassin, who shrugged and muttered “good enough” after being informed by a Green Haven Correctional Facility guard that his lifetime sentence for the brutal slaying of the musician and political activist had, for some reason, been commuted by the new administration. 

Full Story

[saywhat-politics]

When Joe Biggs learned he was being released early from prison by President Donald Trump, a prison guard made sure to set his expectations low.

“You’re still gonna get screwed,” the guard warned him. “You’re not getting pardoned. You’re only getting your sentence commuted, so you’re still a terrorist.” It turned out that the guard’s words were spot on.

Just days after taking office for his second term, Trump made headlines by granting pardons to 1,500 people involved in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. But Biggs, a former leader of the far-right Proud Boys, was among a smaller group of 14 individuals whose prison sentences were commuted—meaning they were let out of jail, but their crimes still stood.

[captain-athos]

I just think I want to hand those cardinals a baby. I think Ray's family likes to visit the vatican periodically and they're of the age now where his niblings are bringing their babies along to meet Uncle Ray. Anyway here's my thoughts and headcanons:

Janusz: swinging those toddlers around by the ankles. he's the funny uncle who's always got treats in his pockets and is saying "pardon my french" every two seconds bc he keeps saying shit they shouldn't be hearing

Lawrence: has never held a baby in his life. Ray has to show him how to do it and hovers nervously the whole time to make sure he's doing it properly. Lawrence is so stressed he won't move from the position Ray has guided him into and is visibly relieved when the baby is taken away from him

Vincent: Great with kids, has them crawling all over him, sings them songs, happily takes over bottle feeding and diaper changes and whatever else needs doing to give the parents a break.

Tedesco: Also great with kids but talks to them like they're adults. He's bouncing a very confused toddler on his arm and is quietly rambling out a bunch of complaints about his commute here until she falls asleep. Quietly losing his mind the entire time they're around because he won't vape while they're in the room.

Agnes: 0 maternal instinct whatsoever. Mostly ignores the kids which means they think she's the coolest most interesting person ever. She's surrounded and she can't get out. She keeps looking to the others for help but they just laugh at her. She's being bombarded with questions that she answers very very seriously before shooing everyone away (it doesn't last) (they think it's a funny game)