AFTER HUNTER — Eleven days before President Biden shocked D.C. by pardoning his son Hunter, a group of lawmakers and advocates gathered outside the Capitol building to urge Biden to grant a different set of clemencies. Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and a handful of others urged the president to use his power to pardon or grant clemency to thousands of people serving time in federal prison for convictions related to nonviolent marijuana use, crack cocaine, and more. “We join a growing chorus of voices calling on President Biden to exercise one of the most profound powers of the presidential office — the power of clemency,” Omar said at the presser. But it’s not quite clear how far Biden is willing to go in that direction beyond the blanket pardon to his son. The White House has signaled there will be more clemencies — press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that Americans “could expect more announcements, more pardons, clemency at the end of this term" — but the administration hasn’t indicated how broad those might be, or if individuals convicted of nonviolent drug crimes are a serious part of their consideration. More than 3,000 people, advocates say, remain in federal prison for marijuana-related crimes. Popular Democracy, one of the advocacy organizations involved in the November 20 press conference, says there are over 10,000 pending clemency petitions they believe the president should pardon or commute. The chorus of Capitol Hill voices pushing for these commutations also includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who led a letter in late November signed by 13 other Democrats in the Senate and the House. “President Biden should expand clemency for people with marijuana-related convictions,” Warren said in a statement. “There’s more the administration can do before the end of the term to reform our system and right these wrongs.” Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley added that “it makes absolutely no sense not to act” on non-violent offenses that are “in many places, no longer offenses today.” When asked if Biden should act on this before his term is over, the Oregon senator, who did not sign Warren’s letter, gave an unequivocal “yes.” The irony of Hunter Biden’s pardon is that one of the crimes he was convicted of is a drug-related crime: he lied about his drug use on a federal form to purchase a gun. Popular Democracy Co-Executive Director Analilia Mejia says it presents an opportunity to argue for more clemencies. “The moment we saw [the Hunter pardon], we viewed it as the tip of the iceberg,” Mejia said. “These are all the tens of thousands of people that Joe Biden must extend the same clemency, the same consideration, the same justice, as he purports to do for his son.” As Biden’s term nears its end, the clemency requests are pouring in. Advocacy organizations like FWD.us and Popular Democracy are requesting pardons or clemencies for individuals serving sentences that would not be given today because laws have changed, for people who are chronically ill or who were incarcerated as children and people on death row. “The shorthand for this is people who are serving disproportionately long sentences,” FWD.us Executive Director Zoë Towns said, pointing out that 1-in-8 people serving time in prison are serving it in the federal system. “It’s a very large prison system, it has very long sentences, [and] the sentences are handed down with quite a fair amount of racial disparity.” POLITICO reported today that Biden is considering preemptive pardons for one class of individuals — those whom he believes could be targeted by the Trump administration, including Sen.-elect Adam Schiff, former Rep. Liz Cheney and Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Biden’s administration has so far granted only 26 pardons (including his son), fewer than were issued by any president in the last 100 years — though he’s made it possible for many nonviolent drug offenders to apply for clemency. “I was surprised at his action,” Mejia said regarding the Hunter pardon. “But I’m also hopeful that it means that he will take further action to again correct the wrongs, to correct his tarnished legacy, to take action in alignment with his words.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at nfertig@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @natsfert.
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