Tangle - Biden's mass clemency.

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Quick hits.

1. A shooter killed two people and wounded six others at a school in Madison, Wisconsin. The suspect, identified as a teenage girl, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and authorities have not announced a motive. (The latest)
2. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence in the German parliament, prompting the dissolution of parliament and triggering early elections, which will be held in February. Scholz will remain in office until parliament elects a new chancellor. (The vote) Separately, Canada's Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned abruptly over policy disagreements with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, including a dispute on handling potential tariffs on Canadian imports by President-elect Donald Trump’s administration. (The resignation) Elsewhere, Ukraine said it had killed a senior Russian general in a targeted assassination in Moscow. (The attack)
3. Alexander Smirnov, a former FBI informant, pleaded guilty to making false statements that the head of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid both President Biden and his son, Hunter, $5 million. These claims led to a House GOP investigation into the Biden family’s business activity. (The plea) 
4. Judge Juan Merchan ruled that President-elect Trump’s conviction in his New York “hush money” case was valid, rejecting Trump’s team’s effort to dismiss the conviction after the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity. (The decision)
5. The Justice Department charged two men with conspiring to export sensitive technology used in a drone attack in Jordan that killed three American troops earlier this year, to Iran. (The charges)

Today's topic.

Biden's commutations and pardons. On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced the largest single-day act of clemency in modern American history, commuting the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were moved from prison to serve home-confinement sentences during the pandemic. Additionally, Biden pardoned 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. 

The pardons and commutations exceeded the previous single-day record set by Barack Obama, who commuted the sentences of 330 people on his final day in office in 2017. Biden said he would continue to review clemency petitions through the end of his term.

Reminder: A pardon completely absolves someone of guilt, while a commutation reduces the sentence of a crime without forgiving the person who was convicted. Both pardons and commutations are forms of clemency. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution gives presidents the power to grant reprieves and pardons for federal crimes.

Presidential pardon power is expansive, but not limitless. Presidents can only pardon "offenses against the United States," meaning state criminal offenses and civil penalties cannot be pardoned by a president. The Supreme Court has said that pardon power is intended to be a tool to offer mercy and grace to the convicted, and that the power should be used to further public welfare. 

Earlier this month, President Biden came under fire for issuing a far-reaching pardon for his son, Hunter, who was facing prison time for tax and gun crimes. The pardon covered a nearly decade-long period of behavior. We covered that story here.

What just happened: Many of Biden's commutations and pardons did not garner attention, but the commutations of two former elected officials drew harsh criticism. 

One was Pennsylvania Judge Michael Conahan, who was convicted in 2011 in the "kids-for-cash" scandal, taking kickbacks from for-profit detention centers in exchange for wrongly sending juveniles to prison. More than 4,000 juvenile convictions were thrown out due to the scheme. Conahan’s house arrest was set to end in 2026. 

Biden’s second controversial commutation was for Rita Crundwell, a former comptroller in Dixon, Illinois, who pleaded guilty to a $54 million embezzlement scheme in 2012, now considered the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history. Crundwell was slated to be released from house arrest in 2028.

Of the 39 pardoned individuals, many committed non-violent drug offenses in their youth and had served in the U.S. military.

Today, we're going to examine the reactions from the right and left to Biden's clemency, then my take.

What the right is saying.

• The right is mostly critical of the commutations and pardons, arguing Biden’s blanket approach was rife with flaws. 
• Some frame the move as an abuse of power in a presidency filled with them. 
• Others defend the practice of clemency while questioning Biden’s use of it. 

In The Washington Examiner, Quin Hillyer said “Biden’s mass pardons are unpardonable.”

“Presidential pardons and commutations can be good policy if judiciously awarded to deserving recipients. However, Biden is handing out blanket pardons for entire classes of crimes. Not only does this practice significantly violate the intent of pardon power, but in practice, it means that wholly undeserving convicts, some of whom committed crimes that shouldn’t be forgiven, will have their records unjustly cleansed,” Hillyer wrote. “The one attracting the most criticism, deservedly so, is the judge who ‘took bribes to send children to for-profit juvenile prisons with sentences disproportionate to their crimes, and one of the children killed himself.’”

“These aren’t people who committed victimless crimes or ones whose sentences were disproportionate to the offense. These aren’t people who particularly distinguished themselves with unusually good deeds after serving time and who just need their records cleansed so they can regain their right to vote and their ability to get jobs and bank loans,” Hillyer said. “These people received sentences commensurate with the major crimes but were already getting a break from prison because of a pandemic that is no longer existent. Now Biden is giving them, for no good reason, the added benefit of full release.”

In PJ Media, Rick Moran wrote “Biden abuses his power of clemency as he has abused all his other powers.”

“The urge to create the illusion that the president is a good and just man is just too much to resist. Joe Biden is no different as far as the urge to be seen ‘doing good’ is concerned. Where he separates himself from normal, run-of-the-mill presidents is in the scale of his do-gooderism,” Moran said. “Biden's recent pardon of his own son, Hunter, complicates his moves to grant clemency to anyone. Hunter would have been convicted of a gun crime, tax fraud, and several other crimes for which Americans are rotting in jail. I'm sure the families of many non-violent criminals who will remain locked up wonder about the president's compassion for his son and not for their loved one.”

The commutations are “an abuse of the president's clemency power. Historically, clemency, for the most part, has been granted selectively and carefully. But Biden's mania for being the first president to name someone of this race or gender to an important job or be the first president to visit this or that country or be the first president to do the most, the largest, the most spectacular, the most awe-inspiring feat in history knows no bounds.”

In Fox News, Brett L. Tolman argued “clemency is good policy.”

“The one-day, record-breaking, commutations of 1,500 Americans in home confinement by President Joe Biden is good policy despite being an unabashedly transparent political salve for the wound caused by his nepotistic, blanket pardon of his son Hunter,” Tolman wrote. “The commutation of the individuals on the CARES Act home confinement is warranted. It’s one of the most successful criminal justice initiatives in this country with a 3.7% recidivism rate – a fraction of the national average… These individuals were held accountable for their crimes, and through changed behavior and abiding the law, a majority are succeeding outside a carceral setting.”

“Clemency is not an act of leniency. Sentencing laws must be applied consistently to every American, and clemency should never be shrouded in secrecy or offered as favors to family or financially, well-connected individuals. While Biden's apparent misuse of his presidential clemency powers overshadows the likely January 6th pardons from President-elect Donald Trump, we cannot afford to forget the thousands of deserving Americans in our federal prisons already serving disproportionately long sentences, often longer than they would receive if sentenced today.”

What the left is saying.

• The left is mixed on Biden’s acts, with many suggesting they are a more defensible use of presidential power than Hunter’s pardon.
• Some say Biden’s criteria for clemency were overly broad and offensive to some crime victims. 
• Others argue Biden should pursue more commutations before leaving office. 

The New York Daily News editorial board wrote “unlike Hunter pardon, Biden’s clemency grants are just.”

“As President Joe Biden heads to the end of his time in the Oval Office, he is leaving with an act of compassion for those serving unnecessarily long federal prison sentences and who have perhaps been targeted by punitive laws that no longer fit in with our contemporary understandings of fairness and proportionality,” the board said. “These grants of clemency were done the right way, through the Department of Justice Office of the Pardon Attorney under regular procedures, unlike how he broke his word and conferred on his legitimately convicted (but not sentenced) son Hunter ‘a full and unconditional pardon.’”

“Many of the sentences commuted would have been initially lower if they had been handed down today. Plus, a chunk of these pardons have been for crimes that no longer exist in their current form, or that we don’t consider very serious,” the board wrote. “In some important ways, the commutations are a recognition that some laws and sentencing guidelines were disproportionate and contrary to what should be the ultimate goal of criminal lockup: to issue some punishment, yes, but also to be dissuasive and to at least allow for the prospect of people returning to their lives with the ability and resolve to live better lives.”

In The Washington Post, Heather Long criticized the “broken” presidential pardon process.

“My jaw dropped when I saw Michael Conahan, a former judge involved in a notorious ‘kids for cash’ scandal in Pennsylvania, among the nearly 1,500 people President Joe Biden granted clemency to last week. The White House portrayed the mass clemency as a historic moment for justice. But Conahan’s commutation only underscores how broken the presidential pardon and clemency process is,” Long said. “An administration official said this wasn’t a case-by-case decision. The Biden team set broad criteria, and Conahan matched them… That explanation isn’t going down well with many in Pennsylvania. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro called the clemency ‘absolutely wrong.’ Some victims are speaking out in shock.”

“For Biden, this is another unforced error. More broadly, it raises fresh questions about presidential clemency going too far and whether it should exist at all. There was outrage when former president Donald Trump pardoned allies such as Stephen K. Bannon, Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner,” Long wrote. “Such dubious grants of presidential mercy reinforce a belief that America has a two-tiered justice system where the wealthy and connected fare much better than everyone else — and certainly better than the young people who came before Judges Conahan and Ciavarella in Luzerne County.”

For The Brennan Center, Lauren-Brooke Eisen called Biden’s move “a good start.”

“President Biden’s historic clemency announcement Thursday is welcome news. It’s a major step in the right direction and a recognition of the excessively punitive nature of our criminal justice system. But there are thousands of additional people who still deserve clemency. Encouragingly, the White House added that the president is continuing to review more clemency options,” Eisen said. “Biden campaigned on a pledge to ‘strengthen America’s commitment to justice and reform our criminal justice system.’ One way for him to ensure that his justice policies have a lasting legacy is by more fully using the clemency power.

“Starting on January 20, Donald Trump will have the power to reverse many of the current administration’s policies — he has already promised as much, vowing to reinstitute the federal death penalty. But he cannot reverse acts of clemency,” Eisen wrote. “We are still hopeful that [Biden] will grant clemency to the more than 40 people on federal death row whose sentences can be commuted to life without parole and more than 6,000 serving racially disparate drug sentences.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• There is no justification for Biden’s commutations in certain cases.
• Conahan was astoundingly immoral, Crundwell was cartoonishly corrupt, and Carlson was a menace to his community.
• I understand wanting to commute harsh sentences, but these particular cases completely overshadow everything else Biden was trying to do.

I'm going to be honest: I was pretty shocked by a few of Biden’s decisions.

In particular, the commutation of Michael Conahan’s sentence left me staring at my computer screen in disbelief. The "Kids for Cash" scheme is as horrific as the name sounds, and is notorious in my home state of Pennsylvania. Conahan was literally destroying children's lives for money — sending them to privately owned juvenile detention centers for "crimes" like making fun of a principal on Myspace, often maximizing his kickbacks by imposing the harshest sentences possible. One of the children Conahan sentenced killed himself after being put behind bars.

That child's mom, Sandy Fonzo, became famous for confronting Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., who was also involved in the kickback scheme, outside a courthouse.

“I am shocked and I am hurt,” Fonzo said after the clemency was announced. “Conahan‘s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son‘s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power. This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer. Right now I am processing and doing the best I can to cope with the pain that this has brought back.”

How could you not agree? It's hard to imagine an act less deserving of clemency than putting children in prison for trumped-up crimes — or extending sentences they already had — in exchange for money. If anything, Conahan's sentence of 17 years felt inadequate to many in Pennsylvania, especially given he's been serving the last few outside of prison.

Rita Crundwell, the other commutation we cited in the introduction, was similarly gobsmacking. At a time of populist resentment and distrust of institutions, Crundwell is the poster child for corruption: She committed the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history, stealing over $50 million dollars from a town of 16,000 people in the span of 20 years. She then spent the money on four dozen cars, a horse-breeding operation, and real estate purchases. As with Conahan, Biden has made no attempt to justify Crundwell’s commutation. 

I also want to highlight one more case of clemency: Jim Carlson. I hadn’t heard Carlson’s story before Biden commuted his sentence, but he was sentenced for running a synthetic drug ring in Minnesota that "sold enough synthetic drugs to cause a public health crisis in Duluth." Carlson reportedly used his own employees as guinea pigs to test how the unregulated drugs worked on customers and misbranded the drugs as incense, bath salts, and glass cleaner to sell them out of his shop.

Given the impact these people had on their communities, I think it's worth considering how those communities reacted to Biden’s acts.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), speaking about the Conahan clemency, said "Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania."

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) said that while some of the pardons were probably worthy, “there were a number that I think make no sense at all,” seemingly referring to Carlson.

And Danny Langloss, current city manager of Dixon, IL (where Crundwell stole over $50 million), said the city is “shocked and outraged with the announcement that President Biden has given Rita Crundwell clemency for the largest municipal embezzlement in the history of our country... This is a complete travesty of justice and a slap in the face for our entire community.”

The 39 pardons Biden granted, as well as many hundreds of commutations, appear to be fair or even just — many were nonviolent crimes involving people who had served lengthy sentences and worked to rehabilitate themselves. Clemency petitions often come with powerful details of what convicted criminals have been doing since they were put behind bars, and many of these people have spent years helping others and trying to repair the damage they've done. Others were simply serving extended sentences for crimes that are no longer punished with long sentences, and it makes sense to allow those people to go back to their lives.

Granting clemency to the trio of Conahan, Crundwell, and Carlson doesn’t fit at all with those ideals. The administration has framed the clemency as an “act of mercy” before the holidays, justifying the decisions by saying the cases they commuted fit a broad set of criteria and didn’t get into the specifics of these cases. But an anonymous administration official told Politico the White House had not considered any of the troubling details around cases like Conahan’s, a jarring revelation considering what he was convicted of. Granting commutations en masse based on broad criteria is a dangerous and insufficient way to handle pardons, and commuting their sentences completely overshadows the rest of what Biden was trying to do. 

Rightfully so. We are living in a time where diseases of despair — like addiction and suicide — are everywhere. We are living in a time where mistrust of the judicial system is at an all-time high and vigilante justice is being celebrated. We are in a time where the government is viewed as incompetent and corrupt. And in this moment, Biden gives reprieve to a corrupt judge who destroyed children's lives, a corrupt government official who stole millions from a small town, and a shop owner who used his place in the community to poison people with synthetic drugs.

It's just hard to understand — and it’s impossible to support.

Take the survey: What do you think of Biden’s mass clemency? Let us know!

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Elon Musk recently said:

“The F-35 [combat aircraft] design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people. This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes. And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed.”

I totally agree with Mr. Musk; especially his fourth sentence. I have said for a few years now: 

Why are we still building manned fighters (like the F-35) instead of unmanned fighter drones? With fighter drones you don’t need to spend millions of dollars to train pilots, risk their lives and suffer all of human foibles such as fatigue… If we are serious about reining in our huge deficits (which I doubt), we could reduce the Defense budget without adversely impacting our defenses by ending the F-35 program right now.

What do you think?

— Jim from Ashland, Oregon

Tangle: This is a repeated mantra around our virtual Tangle watercooler: If you’re serious about cutting federal spending, you have to look at the biggest areas where the Federal government spends money right now: Healthcare (13%), Defense (14%), Medicare (16%), and Social Security (20%).

Caption: Federal Spending in FY 2025 to-date, Treasury.gov

In line items that big, I’m sure you’ll find some significant excessive spending somewhere; and Musk’s comment about the F-35 sounds right to me.

Now, I should add a couple important caveats: All of the largest spending categories are probably not that big primarily because of waste, but because they serve a vital need. What could be more important to our country than our national security and the health and welfare of our citizens? And I also know what many of you will say about Social Security: It’s our money, we paid into it ourselves, and we deserve the benefits that come from that. That’s a bit oversimplified, but still: the program is so popular that it’s very difficult to curtail.

Then, there’s the issue of scapegoating. When we read about healthcare inefficiencies, we often hear about PBMs — Pharmacy Benefit Managers — as big drivers of cost. However, they’re also talked about like they’re the big bad boogeyman in healthcare, and they aren’t. The issues in our healthcare system are complex, deep-rooted, and many. 

The same is true for military spending. I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve read about the F-35’s $2 trillion price tag. I’m not going to sit here and tell you those articles are wrong and that the jet is worth the cost; in fact, I think the jet is probably overpriced and that Musk is probably right. I just want to be cautious not to say ‘let’s scrap the F-35’ and call the problem solved. In my most optimistic read, I think finding inefficiencies like this is exactly what Musk and DOGE could do best, and I hope he keeps doing it.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

On Friday, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company agreed to pay $650 million to resolve criminal and civil investigations into its work advising opioids manufacturer Purdue Pharma. Federal prosecutors charged McKinsey’s U.S. branch with conspiring to misbrand a drug and obstruction of justice for its efforts to help Purdue boost sales of OxyContin, a painkiller widely viewed as the catalyst of the opioid crisis. As part of the agreement, McKinsey admitted that it chose to continue working with Purdue despite knowing the risks of OxyContin and that it had advised the company to “turbocharge” sales of the drug. USA Today has the story.

Numbers.

• 161. The number of people granted clemency by President Biden prior to last week’s announcement. 
• 1,217 and 282. The number of men and women, respectively, whose sentences were commuted by President Biden. 
• 51. The median age of those granted clemency by Biden. 
• 769. The number of people who were granted clemency who had less than a year left in their sentence. 
• 51%. The percentage of U.S. adults who approve of presidents having the power to pardon or commute prison sentences of people convicted of federal crimes, according to an August 2024 YouGov poll. 
• 90%. The approximate percentage of Biden’s total acts of clemency that have been granted during his final fiscal year in office (though his term is ongoing), according to Pew Research.
• 84%. The percentage of President Trump’s total acts of clemency that came during his final fiscal year in office. 
• 61%. The percentage of President Obama’s total acts of clemency that came during his final fiscal year in office.

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just published a conversation with Palestinian-American Yousef Munayyer.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the test flight of the PetroDynamics XP-4 drone.
• Nothing to do with politics: The unranked Vermont Catamounts just won the NCAA men’s soccer tournament, beating #13 Marshall in a stunning overtime victory. 
• Yesterday’s survey: 2,235 readers responded to our survey on the UAP sightings in the Northeast with 66% saying they were evidence of government technology. “I agree the UAPs are probably benign, but the government's opaque response is exactly why conspiracy theories and mistrust of institutions is so rampant. Stop treating the American people like gullible idiots,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Max Goldberg, a Philadelphia resident and DIY project enthusiast, had an old sports display clock and an idea. Using publicly available data about the bus system, Goldberg set out to link the clock to the bus system so that the clock would show the number of minutes until the next bus arrived. The successfully created clock now sits in his front window, where individuals waiting for the bus can clearly view it. “If I can do anything to make public transit a little less annoying for people,” Goldberg said, “I feel like it’s my duty.” The Philadelphia Inquirer has the story. 

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