During his four years as pretender to the presidency, Joe Biden has pardoned or otherwise lessened the sentences of over 10,000 people.
The biggest single batch of these was in 2022, when he pardoned 6500 at one sitting, allegedly in jail for simple possession of marijuana. He has had other pardon lists though, both large and small, particularly several thousand in the months between the 2024 election and his final departure from the office on January 20, 2025.
In reading the statements prepared for him by aides, he always explains that these are people convicted of minor offenses, who were sentenced more severely than the crimes merit, so he is just being fair and cutting these long sentences short.
But what we must always remember is that a plea bargain process almost always factored into the original conviction and sentencing, and Joe Biden neither considers nor mentions this fact.
Since the plea bargain process occurs virtually everywhere across the United States, it is reasonable to assume that none of these people were even convicted for the actual crime they committed. In fact, criminals are almost always convicted of a significantly lesser crime than they actually committed, in order to save prosecutors time, money, and risk.
This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the concept of plea bargaining. It often makes sense, if done appropriately.
If a prosecutor has someone he knows to be a rapist, a drug dealer, a mugger, a burglar, he weighs the evidence and witnesses as his disposal, and asks himself the question, “Am I certain I’ll win the case, or is there a chance he’ll beat the rap?” And sometimes he’ll ask himself a second question, “Knowing how strapped our department is, if we do go to trial and win this conviction, how many other criminals will we be unable to prosecute at all, because we only have such limited resources?”
Unfortunate though it is, this is the scenario faced by good prosecutors all over the country, from local and state to federal. They routinely plea bargain a serious crime down to a lesser one, a notch or two down in the severity scale – in order to at least make sure to get some time behind bars for the criminal, so they can get to work on the next case, and the next one, and the next.
That’s in the case of good prosecutors. In the case of bad prosecutors, of whom there are far too many (thanks to George Soros and his ilk), in many jurisdictions it’s even worse than that.
How did this reality factor into the Biden-Harris White House decision to grant pardons and commutations?
Not at all.
The Biden-Harris regime accepted the crime of the sentence as if it was the crime that the criminal committed, declared that the sentence was unfairly harsh, and set the criminals free.
We don’t know what crimes they actually committed; in most cases, we will never know. Prosecutors negotiate in a manner they think, and hope, will be a good deal for their constituents; they ensure some jail time in an era in which hardly any criminals see any jail time at all. It’s not as much jail time as their actual crimes deserve, but it’s something. It locks them away, at least for a while. That’s more than the Democratic Party as a whole ever wants to do.
Rather than rolling the dice and possibly getting the considerable jail time of the real offense, or possibly losing the case and getting no jail time at all, the prosecutors pitch a lesser charge, but with sentencing at the higher end of that lesser charge’s standard range. The criminal, his defense attorney, and the judge are all fully aware of this deal, and are all on board with it. This is the agreed plan for each such criminal.
So the Left here is having it both ways. First, in order to save the full costs of a full prosecution and trial, they gave these criminals a big break. And then, years later, completely unnecessarily, and therefore without any justification, Joe Biden gives them a second big break by commuting their already greatly reduced sentences. These criminals get two breaks rather than one.
Some of these criminals were already out, their sentences having been complete already by the time Biden’s order was issued. Others were still in, and had years left to go behind bars, until Joe Biden put pen to paper and signed whatever lists his staff assembled for him.
To the extent that Joe Biden knows what he’s signing these days, he certainly knows all of the above; none of this is a secret to him. As mentally challenged as he has been these past several years, he’s spent enough time on the Senate judiciary committee to know about this process. He even attended law school himself, fifty-some years ago, and somehow managed to clamber over that finish line, albeit at a forgiving law school in a forgiving year. Nobody can claim that Joe Biden never knew about this aspect of the criminal justice system.
Incidentally, many of the reporters who are reporting on this story – certainly all the reporters from big cities – also know all of the above; none of them talk about it.
This is in fact all a big ruse, designed to give the impression that the Left is not on the side of criminals, when in fact, the American Left is nothing but a criminal organization in every way.
As Joe Biden prepared to vacate the office for the arrival of President Trump and his team, the Biden-Harris crowd found it irresistible to issue great lists of pardons and clemencies – by the thousands – in these final months.
Why, exactly? We don’t know. Perhaps to reconfirm their party’s bona fides with the criminal element, to remind them that they will always be on their side? Perhaps to put the nation ever more at risk, by unleashing thousands more criminals into the neighborhoods? Perhaps to collect some bribes – or should we say, charitable foundation contributions (there’s no evidence of that yet, but remember that in the case of the Clinton presidency, the evidence didn’t surface until months after the fact, when it was too late to impeach him for it).
At the moment, we cannot say for sure why.
All we can do is recognize what this scheming old wretch and his scheming staff have done: issue thousands of pardons and commutations that together make the nation a more dangerous place.
It’s what they do. Because – when we really get to the bottom of it – that’s just where the modern Democrat’s alliances lie.
Copyright 2025 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. President of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA