Biden Pardon Misuse Escalates to Murderers

President Biden’s misuse of the pardon power during the post-election period continues. He began with his influence-peddling, cocaine-snorting son, continued with a variety of undeserving miscreants, noted here, and now has expanding to reducing the sentences of 37 murderers. Jess Bravin has this story in the WSJ:

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said.

Mistake? Biden is the one who has un-condemned these justly sentenced murderers. He is the one who has compounded the “unimaginable and irreparable loss.” This move is not based on any individual problems with the cases but only on long-standing criticisms of capital punishment. So why didn’t Mr. Biden do this much earlier? Like, before the election? Because he knew that would have diminished his own electoral chances, before he dropped out, or his party’s afterward.

The 3:25 pm ET version of the WSJ story has these reactions:

“Joe Biden is using his last days in office to spare the worst monsters in America,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said on X. “Democrats can’t even defend Biden’s outrageous decision as some kind of principled, across-the-board opposition to the death penalty since he didn’t commute the three most politically toxic cases.”

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, called the commutations “a gross miscarriage of justice.” Scheidegger, whose group advocates for crime victims and supports capital punishment, said the Constitution should be amended “to suspend the pardon power during the lame-duck period, as that is when the worst abuses occur.”

For more on that last proposal, see the previous post.

Update: The 4:05 pm version of the story has this reaction:

“These are among the worst killers in the world and this abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families and their loved ones,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said.