President Joe Biden announced Monday that he is taking 37 people off federal death row to serve out life sentences behind bars — a decision that leaves only three federal prisoners awaiting execution when President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.

“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole,” Biden announced in a statement released Monday.

Notably, the president did not commute the sentences of three people whose crimes included mass shootings or acts of terrorism: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the deadly Boston Marathon bombing in 2013; Dylann Roof, a White nationalist who massacred nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.

“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said, referring to his Justice Department’s halt on federal executions.

The majority of the 37 individuals whose sentences were commuted Monday were convicted for less high-profile offenses, such as murders tied to drug trafficking or the killings of prison guards or other inmates.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in his statement. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.” (CNN)

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US President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he has pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who faced sentencing this month for federal tax and gun convictions, marking a reversal as he prepares to leave office.

“Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” the president said in a statement. It is a “full and unconditional pardon,” according to a copy of the executive grant of clemency.

This official grant of clemency cannot be rescinded by President-elect Donald Trump.

By pardoning his son, Joe Biden has reneged on a public promise that he made repeatedly before and after dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. The president and his top White House spokesperson said unequivocally, including after Trump won the 2024 election, that he would not pardon Hunter Biden or commute his sentence.

The pardon means Hunter Biden won’t be sentenced for his crimes, and it eliminates any chance that he’ll be sent to prison, which was a possibility. The judges overseeing his cases will likely cancel the sentencing hearings, which were slated for December 12 in the gun case and December 16 in the tax case.

The broadly crafted pardon explicitly grants clemency for the tax and gun offenses from his existing cases, plus any potential federal crimes that Hunter Biden may have committed “from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” This time frame, importantly, covers his entire tenure on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and much of his other overseas work, including in China. He had faced scrutiny for his controversial foreign business dealings, and Trump has repeatedly said he should be prosecuted for his activities in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers on Sunday night formally notified the judges in his criminal cases about the pardon — and he said in a sworn affidavit that he has accepted the pardon from his father.

In new court filings, Hunter Biden’s lawyers told the judges in both of his cases that the pardon “requires dismissal of the Indictment against him with prejudice and adjournment of all future proceedings in this matter.”

Joe Biden said in his statement that he decided to issue the pardon because his son was “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” saying that “Hunter was treated differently” from people who commit similar crimes.

The president said his political opponents in Congress “instigated” the charges “to attack me and oppose my election.”

He said in his statement, “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice. … I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”

The president further claimed Hunter Biden was “singled out” for prosecution “only because he is my son” — allegations that were previously raised by Hunter Biden’s lawyers and resoundingly rejected by two federal judges. The judge who oversaw his gun trial in Delaware concluded that Hunter Biden’s theory of a selective prosecution was “nonsensical under the facts here.”

In a social media post Sunday night, Trump called the pardon “such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” In an apparent joke, Trump also asked whether the pardon includes his supporters who attacked the US Capitol during the January 6, 2021, insurrection — whom he has promised to pardon once he’s back in office.

End of a six-year saga

Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury in June of illegally buying and possessing a gun as a drug user, after a gut-wrenching trial that delved into his drug abuse and family dysfunction. He then pleaded guilty in September to nine tax offenses, stemming from $1.4 million in taxes that he didn’t pay while spending lavishly on escorts, strippers, cars and drugs.

Special counsel David Weiss, who was the Trump-appointed US attorney for Delaware, began investigating Hunter Biden in 2018 and filed both indictments in 2023. As president, Joe Biden had the authority to shut down the probe or direct the Justice Department to dismiss the charges — but he kept his pledge to stay out of the matter.

Both criminal cases revolved around Hunter Biden’s decadeslong struggle with drug and alcohol addiction, which he discussed openly, including in his 2021 memoir. From the start, Hunter Biden’s lawyers argued that he was being targeted by overzealous prosecutors who caved to public pressure from Trump and congressional Republicans.

“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction — mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” Hunter Biden said in a statement Sunday night.

“In recovery we can be given the opportunity to make amends where possible and rebuild our lives if we never take for granted the mercy that we have been afforded,” he added. “I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”

Joe Biden justified the pardon by pointing out that few people are charged with the addiction-related gun offenses “without aggravating factors,” such as using the weapon as part of a violent crime. He also argued that many people who pay back all of their late taxes, like Hunter did, are allowed to revolve their problems through civil enforcement, instead of facing criminal charges.

This is the latest instance of an outgoing president using the pardon power to help a family member: Shortly before they both left office, Bill Clinton pardoned his brother and Donald Trump pardoned the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“As sympathetic as Hunter Biden’s circumstances might be, a pardon from Joe Biden would still be an abuse of the clemency power,” said Jeffrey Crouch, a leading expert on pardons who teaches at American University. “Presidents should not use clemency to help out their friends, family and allies in order to further their own personal interest.” (CNN)

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The US has a “significant” defence partnership with India and “terrific cooperation” inside the Quad, the White House has said.

The remarks by John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council in the White House, to reporters at Monday’s daily news conference come ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US next week.

“We are very much looking forward to have Prime Minister Modi here,” he said.

“As you know, the United States has a significant defence partnership with India and terrific cooperation inside the Quad, across the Indo-Pacific with India… We are looking forward to the visit,” Kirby said in response to a question. The Quad comprises Japan, India, Australia, and the US. The four countries in 2017 gave shape to the long-pending proposal of setting up the Quadrilateral coalition or “Quad” to counter China’s aggressive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific.

Modi has been invited by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden for an official State Visit, which will include a State Dinner on June 22. (NDTV)

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United States President Joe Biden has officially launched his campaign for re-election in 2024, becoming the Democratic frontrunner in a race that could pit him for a second time against Republican contender Donald Trump, according to his campaign video.

Biden’s announcement on Tuesday came on the fourth anniversary of his first successful presidential bid, launched on April 25, 2019.

A majority of Democrats have said they would back Biden, 80, against a Republican challenger in next year’s election, a recent poll found.

But the Democratic president faces some of the lowest approval ratings of his tenure so far, and his age — Biden is currently the oldest person to hold the US’s highest office — has spurred questions about his re-election prospects.

Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, is betting his first-term legislative achievements and more than 50 years of experience in Washington will count for more than concerns over his age. He faces a smooth path to winning his party’s nomination, with no serious Democratic rivals. But he is still set for a hard-fought struggle to retain the presidency in a bitterly divided nation.

“I said we are in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are,” Biden said. “The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer.”

‘MAGA extremists’

Few things have unified Democratic voters such as the prospect of Trump returning to power. And Biden’s political standing within his party stabilised after Democrats notched a stronger-than-expected performance in last year’s midterm elections, as the president set out to run again on the same themes that buoyed his party last fall, particularly on preserving access to abortion.

“Freedom. Personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as Americans. There’s nothing more important. Nothing more sacred,” Biden said in the launch video, which painted the Republican Party as trying to roll back access to abortion, cut Social Security, limit voting rights and ban books they disagree with.

“Around the country, MAGA [Make America Great Again] extremists are lining up to take those bedrock freedoms away. This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for reelection.”

Biden is facing a couple of long-shot primary challengers – including self-help guru Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr – but as a sitting president, he comes into race for the Democratic nomination as a clear frontrunner.

The nominee will be confirmed at the party’s national convention in Chicago in August 2024.

Trump-Biden rematch?

On the Republican side, Trump is widely considered to be the 2024 frontrunner.
The former president announced his campaign in November, but since then he has faced a series of legal woes, including criminal charges in New York over alleged hush-money payments he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Still, Trump – who has pleaded not guilty in the case – maintains strong support, with NBC News finding this month that 46 percent of Republican primary voters would support him.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had the second-highest level of Republican support at 31 percent, though he has yet to formally announce his candidacy.

Should Trump gain the Republican nomination, it would set Biden up for a rematch of the hard-fought 2020 election, which he won thanks to victories in key swing states. (Al Jazeera)

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