A lot of people shook their heads when President Biden gave a sweeping pardon to his son, Hunter, though many were also not surprised the “big guy” was likely helping himself by helping his son.
Last week, however, many jaws dropped when Biden signed paperwork that granted approximately 1,500 commutations and 40 pardons to people convicted of non-violent felonies.
Law enforcement advocate Randy Sutton, host of the “A Cop's Life” podcast, says what may seem compassionate is really a nakedly political act.
“This is symptomatic,” he says, “of everything that has been wrong with the Biden administration.”
Sutton’s observation comes after many critics say law and order was turned upside down during Biden’s term. Reacting to the Dobbs abortion ruling, prosecutors at the Department of Justice charged peaceful pro-life protesters for FACE Act violations in a blatant act of political revenge. In many blue cities, far-left district attorneys have let criminals walk free because their race makes them a victim of society.
Among the people freed by Biden’s pen is Rita Crundwell, a former city comptroller who stole more than $53 million from an Illinois town over two decades. Crundwell, now 71, had been on home confinement since 2021 after being released eight years early from federal prison, CBS News reported. She was set to be released in 2028.
In a statement, the City of Dixon said it is “shocked and outraged” Biden had given clemency to Crundwell for the “largest municipal embezzlement in the history of our country.”
Biden also commuted the sentence of a former county judge, Michael Conahan, who was caught sending juvenile inmates to a for-profit detention center. Conahan, now 72, was sentenced in 2011 to 17 ½ years in federal prison for pocketing $2 million in a kickback scheme.
Biden’s list of pardons and commutations easily outpaces the second-largest number, which was 330 and set by Barack Obama in 2017.
At the end of his first term, Donald Trump had pardoned 144 convicted felons and commuted 94 sentences.
Sutton says he was alarmed to learn Biden is now being lobbied to empty death row of all of its inmates, too.
“The Democratic political structure wants to rid the prisons of the prisoners,” he says.
