Biden gives Christmas clemency to 11, expands pot pardon after criticism
WASHINGTON — President Biden granted pre-Christmas prison commutations to 11 people jailed for drug crimes Friday, while slightly expanding his marijuana mass pardon unveiled last year — which critics ripped for failing to fulfill a campaign vow to spring everyone behind bars for pot.
Biden, 81, wrote some of the nation’s harshest drug laws during his 36 years in the Senate, including one sending some people to prison for life without parole for dealing marijuana.
During the 2020 campaign, however, Biden pivoted to promising a laxer approach, including freeing “everyone” in prison for pot.
The 11 singled out Friday included nine people jailed for crack cocaine-related crimes and two for methamphetamine offenses.
Biden issued a proclamation expanding eligibility for pardons under the policy he announced last year, which allowed anyone convicted federally or in DC of simple marijuana possession to have their record wiped clean.
The expansion also allows pardons for people convicted of using pot on federal lands.
It’s unclear how many additional people will qualify — after Biden’s initial mass clemency was denounced as a pre-midterms ruse because it didn’t actually release anyone while leaving behind more than 2,000 convicts in prison for dealing pot as opposed to possessing it.
“America was founded on the principle of equal justice under law,” Biden said in a statement Friday.
“Elected officials on both sides of the aisle, faith leaders, civil rights advocates, and law enforcement leaders agree that our criminal justice system can and should reflect this core value that makes our communities safer and stronger. That is why today I am announcing additional steps I am taking to make the promise of equal justice a reality.”
Viral anti-Biden videos have called into question whether the legal system actually treats drug users equally.
One widely circulated video shows a split-screen of first son Hunter Biden weighing out 21 grams of crack cocaine and smoking it while his father boasted in a Senate speech that he and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) had passed a law mandating five years in prison for smaller amounts of crack.
“If you have a piece of crack cocaine no bigger than this quarter … you go to jail for 5 years. You get no probation, you get nothing other than 5 years in jail — the judge doesn’t have a choice!” Joe Biden said.
Although Biden made unprecedented early-term use of his clemency powers, according to the White House, activists have said it falls short of what he promised as a candidate.
Last year, protesters outside the White House blasted on loop audio of Biden’s 2019 campaign pledge to free “everyone” in prison for pot and accused him of a half-measure designed to mislead voters.
“I 100% know this was for the midterms,” rapper M-1 of left-wing hip-hop duo Dead Prez told The Post of Biden’s mass pardon. “I think that we need to be wiser and not be used again.”
Biden’s legislation in the 1980s and ’90s “made warehousing and the prison-industrial complex a viable thing,” M-1 said. “If you don’t connect the three-strikes-you’re-out law and the other legislation that he had done in the past with what’s happening today, then you won’t see the full hypocrisy.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, who supervised the conviction of 1,956 people for pot crimes while San Francisco district attorney, “locked up so many of us in California for weed,” the rapper added. “If you read the headlines or you read the narrative that the White House is pushing out, you would be confused.”
Inmates in federal prison for marijuana-related crimes told The Post they were stunned that Biden’s mass clemency didn’t actually release any of them — despite recreational use of pot now being legal under state law in about half of the country.
“Biden fed us rancid hamburger and the media is celebrating as if he served up filet mignon,” said federal inmate Joseph Akers, whose 16.5-year sentence for taking part in a marijuana dealing conspiracy was scheduled to end in 2031.