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What are notable examples of pardons by Joe Biden?
Executive summary
President Joe Biden granted a historically large number of clemency actions over his presidency — analyses count roughly 4,245 acts of clemency during his four-year term (Pew) and official tallies list thousands on the Justice Department’s clemency page (Office of the Pardon Attorney) [1] [2]. Notable individual and mass actions reported in news coverage include the December 2024 commutation of about 1,499 sentences and pardons for 39 people convicted of nonviolent crimes, a federal pardon for his son Hunter Biden (Dec. 2024), and a set of last‑minute preemptive pardons on Jan. 20, 2025 that included family members, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley and members of the Jan. 6 committee [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. A record‑setting volume: Biden’s clemency by the numbers
Pew Research Center’s analysis concluded Biden granted about 4,245 acts of clemency in his term, a total larger than any prior president on record; that count combines pardons, commutations and other clemency actions and includes cases where no formal petition was filed [1]. Official listings maintained by the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney catalog those individual grants across 2021–2025; the DOJ site is the primary government record for specific entries [2].
2. The biggest single‑day move: Dec. 2024 commutations and pardons
In December 2024 Biden commuted roughly 1,499 sentences — largely people who had been released to home confinement during the Covid pandemic — and pardoned 39 individuals convicted of nonviolent offenses, a move described by multiple outlets as the largest single‑day act of clemency in modern history [3] [7]. News reports and the White House framed that action as targeting overly harsh sentences and rehabilitated nonviolent offenders [3].
3. Hunter Biden: a politically charged, individual pardon
Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter for federal charges (framed by the White House as covering alleged crimes from Jan. 1, 2014 through Dec. 1, 2024 in some reports) drew intense partisan attention; reporting notes Biden had previously said “no one is above the law,” and that the pardon was controversial across party lines [8] [4]. News outlets reported the Hunter pardon as a notable example of a preemptive pardon granted without a formal petition, which Pew highlights as part of Biden’s broader clemency pattern [1] [4].
4. Last‑minute preemptive pardons: family, officials, and critics
On his final day in office Biden issued a set of preemptive pardons that included several family members (siblings and spouses), Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated Jan. 6; outlets characterized these as last‑minute moves intended to prevent what the administration called politically motivated prosecutions [5] [6] [9]. Coverage also noted bipartisan criticism and concern about precedents set by such preemptive, broadly protective pardons [10] [9].
5. Mass marijuana and military pardons: policy‑driven, wide categories
Biden used pardons to implement policy priorities as well: he issued mass pardons for simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and for related low‑level marijuana offenses, and pardoned former service members convicted under an earlier ban on consensual gay sex — actions presented as corrective measures to outdated laws [3]. Such category-wide pardons were framed by the White House and press as aimed at systemic inequities rather than individual case advocacy [3].
6. How reporting frames competing perspectives
Supporters portrayed many of Biden’s clemency actions as principled corrections for overlong sentences and outdated criminal statutes; critics — across partisan lines — argued certain pardons (notably family members and the Hunter pardon) invited abuses of executive clemency and risked eroding public trust. News outlets and analyses explicitly cite both the administration’s stated goals and the political backlash that followed [3] [4] [10].
7. Limits of available reporting and official records
The Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney provides the administrative record for individual grants, but broader tallies and categorizations (4,245 acts, largest single‑day totals) come from secondary analyses like Pew and contemporaneous news reporting — each frames figures differently and counts pardons/commutations in varying ways [2] [1] [3]. Available sources do not mention details about internal deliberations or the full rationale behind each individual clemency decision beyond public statements [2] [1].
Bottom line: Biden’s clemency legacy is large in both scale and controversy — combining policy‑driven, category pardons and high‑profile individual preemptive pardons that drew bipartisan criticism — and is documented across government records and multiple news analyses [2] [1] [3] [5].