There’s an age-old concept – in crisis, opportunity – that should be deployed as President Joe Biden winds down his administration by signing off on pardons, commutations and other acts of clemency.
By now, you must have heard the cacophony of controversy after Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden on Sunday, giving him a get-out-of-jail-free card on convictions for federal gun and tax charges.
Biden, who had long promised to stay clear of his son’s cases and respect the outcome, has been castigated for a solid week by Republicans and Democrats for such a blatant flip-flop at the end of his term, when there is little political price for him to pay.
Biden owns all that. Some allies see him as justified. But plenty of people see it as a black mark on his half-century of public service.
That’s done. Condemnation won’t change anything in this crisis Biden created for himself. So what comes next?
Biden has an opportunity here to add something else to his legacy – a thoughtful, comprehensive approach to clemency in the final 45 days of his presidency.
Opinion:By selfishly pardoning his son Hunter, Joe Biden flat-out destroyed his legacy
Democrats in Congress say don’t stop at Hunter Biden
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat who has advocated for reforming how clemency is granted in criminal cases, sent Biden a letter two weeks ago – before he pardoned his son – calling on the president to lean into his clemency authority in the closing weeks of his administration.
Sixty-six of her Democratic House colleagues signed on.
Pressley told me she agreed with Biden’s rationale for his son’s pardon, that he had been unfairly targeted for prosecution because of who his dad is. But she noted that the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of The Pardon Attorney has a backlog of more than 10,000 people seeking some sort of clemency.
Donald Trump had approved by the end of his term in January 2021 more clemency actions than Biden has so far.
“Don’t stop at Hunter Biden,” Pressley said. “This is a matter of legacy. I would hate to think that Joe Biden could end his legacy and, in history’s recounting, that we could ever have a scenario where Donald Trump has a better track record on clemency than Joe Biden.”
In her letter with colleagues and again this week, Pressley called on Biden to “consider pardons for those in federal custody with unjustified sentencing disparities, the elderly, the chronically ill, people on death row, women punished for crimes of their abusers, and many, many more.”
Opinion:Biden was right to pardon his son. Trump would have made Hunter a target.
Advocacy groups are pushing hard for a clemency rush
FWD.us, a bipartisan political organization that advocates for immigration and criminal justice reform, took a different approach this week in asking Biden to step up his clemency game. The group is talking to the president through his television.
Zoë Towns, executive director of FWD.us, told me her group invested $150,000 to start airing a commercial on CNN and MSNBC, specifically targeting shows Biden is known to watch, like “Morning Joe.”
The group plans to up that to “a pretty robust six-figure spend” in this “audience of one” effort to reach the president, Towns said.
Biden campaigned in 2020 on eliminating the death penalty at the federal level. That’s not a promise he kept.
But Towns and Pressley both find hope in Biden’s actions in office to grant clemency to people convicted for marijuana possession on federal lands or ousted from the military during the discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibited gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals from serving.
Opinion:Biden promised no jail time for weed. He’s running out of time to pardon cannabis convicts.
Towns wants Biden to dig into cases prepped by the Office of the Pardon Attorney for people serving “disproportionately long sentences” ruled on years ago under sentencing practices unlikely to be used today.
“We think that a carefully vetted group of hopefully very many people who are serving out-of-step sentences should be taken super seriously by the president as he takes this effort on and hopefully grants as many clemencies in that group as possible,” Towns said.
Biden shouldn’t be afraid of wielding his power
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, asked Monday about any looming clemency actions, said Biden is “thinking through that process very thoroughly.”
She added that she had no timeline to make public about it, but she noted that presidencies usually conclude with a round of pardons or other actions.
That’s too slow for Pressley. Biden’s term ends on Jan. 20. She wants people granted clemency home by Christmas.
“I don’t want him to wait until January, because we don’t know what procedural hurdles – given that we have an incoming hostile administration – that they might put in place or what they might undo,” Pressley said. “So he has a responsibility and the authority to change lives.”
And here, at the end of our conversation, the congresswoman offered a take on her political party and the use of power that I had not considered. But it rang true as I heard her describe it.
She said that, while reflecting on the outcome of last month’s election, she was unable to shake the feeling that Democrats can be afraid of power and intimidated in using it.
“I think many understand that we seek to be the adults in the room, but I don’t know that they always see us as the fighters in the room,” Pressley said. “And so what I’m saying in this moment is – President Biden, you have the authority. You have the power. Use it.”
Biden did that for his son. He should get to work, doing it for others.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan
