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AIPROPX ReportFox News — Politics · 4h ago
Biden clemency blitz left DOJ scrambling as many commutations bypassed normal vetting, emails show
FIRST ON FOX: Justice Department (DOJ) officials scrambled after former President Joe Biden’s end-of-term clemency grants were announced, trying to determine what some decisions actually covered and correcting errors in others — part of a broader clemency process that drew criticism from former U.S. pardon attorneys, a federal judge and other officials, internal emails show.
The records were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) and shared with Fox News Digital.
In one exchange, involving a career offender convicted in a series of crack-cocaine trafficking cases, prosecutors were left asking whether Biden had commuted a separate 235-month sentence for the man that was not explicitly listed. The question prompted a deputy pardon attorney to offer the "most sensible reading," while acknowledging that "many" of Biden’s Jan. 17 commutations had bypassed the agency’s normal pardon-office vetting and did not undergo the typical level of review.
In another episode, the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPA) was caught off guard by Hunter Biden’s pardon and later had to correct a notice that incorrectly described him as receiving it "after completion of sentence" — even though he had not yet been sentenced, never would be, and the pardon was full and unconditional. Officials also spent days working through how to authenticate and transmit the pardon to the court.
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Separately, U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland asked for an explanation after reviewing more than a dozen North Dakota commutations and saying that neither sentencing judges, prosecutors nor victims had been consulted — "not even" by telephone. He also questioned the validity of several pardons, noting they were out-of-step with his view of the second-chance rationale associated with clemency grants.
"The process didn’t match the public sales pitch," former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told Fox News Digital. "There is a Grand Canyon gap between the public description and the internal reality."
"This paints a troubling picture of a pardon process driven by politics and haste rather than the careful deliberation such extraordinary acts of executive clemency demand," added PPT's communications director Alexa Moutevelis. "The Justice Department pardon office’s own emails show the final Biden auto-pen blitz was so clumsy and rushed that the chaos extended even to the most high-profile and controversial of all: his own son, Hunter."
The Biden administration had publicly sought to assure Americans that the president took clemency "very, very seriously," with then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying cases were presented to the president by his team for a final decision.
DOJ told Fox News Digital that clemency officials did not conduct an individualized review of the slate of roughly 1,500 people whose sentences Biden commuted Dec. 12. Instead, they were granted clemency as a group after being identified by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and DOJ as people serving sentences on home confinement during COVID under the CARES Act. BOP had previously assessed the recipients before placing them on home confinement, but clemency officials did not separately review most recipients’ individual offenses or case histories before the Dec. 12 grants.
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Meanwhile, concerns inside DOJ surfaced almost immediately after Biden's Jan. 17 grants were announced. The Wall Street Journal reported roughly two weeks after they went out that then-U.S. Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer told U.S. attorneys in a Jan. 18 internal email that Biden's clemency action "was not carried out in consultation with the Office of the Pardon Attorney and there was little coordination with the Department."
Eleven days after Biden’s Jan. 17 mass commutations, on Jan. 28, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Maya Song of the Eastern District of Virginia contacted OPA after a court raised a question about a commutation Biden seemingly awarded to Christopher Damon Spencer. The clemency list identified him alongside the docket number for a 2003 case, but Spencer also had a separate 2011 case in which he had been sentenced to 235 months in prison. Song asked whether Biden’s commutation applied to that sentence as well.
Deputy Pardon Attorney Kira Gillespie responded hours later that applying the commutation to both docket numbers was the "most sensible reading" and apologized for the confusion.
"Many of the cases that were granted commutation on January 17 were not vetted through our office," Gillespie wrote, "and so the data we had available was not reviewed as carefully as we would ordinarily hope it to be."
The emails show a separate episode of confusion following Hunter Biden’s pardon. OPA formally told prosecutors that the Dec. 1 pardon "was not processed via application through our Office," and Oyer later confirmed internally that the office had been caught off guard.
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The OPA’s surprise was reported publicly at the time, but the newly obtained emails provide internal confirmation from Oyer herself. When a DOJ public-affairs official told her that Politico planned to report the office had been "taken by surprise" and asked whether that characterization was wrong, Oyer replied: "I’m curious about the sourcing on #1, but it’s accurate."
OPA then had to correct its own notification. On Dec. 2, Senior Deputy Pardon Attorney Rosalind Sargent-Burns told prosecutors that an earlier notice had incorrectly described Hunter Biden as receiving a full and unconditional pardon "after completion of sentence," saying the phrase "was included in error" and apologizing for the confusion.
Days later, prosecutors turned to OPA after the federal court handling Hunter Biden’s Calif...
BidenDOJInternalJustice DepartmentBiden'sFIRST ON FOXPresident Joe Biden’sU.SFreedomInformation ActProtectPublic’s Trust
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