Biden pardons family members and frees imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier in last official act
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Biden issued the sweeping pardons just minutes before he departed the White House for the final time as president. In his last official act before leaving the White House and ending a half-century of government service, President Joe Biden has issued sweeping preemptive pardons to members of his family who’ve long been the target of attacks from President-elect Donald Trump and his allies and commuted the sentence of a Native American activist who has spent a half-century in prison for the death of an FBI agent.
In a statement released as Biden arrived at the U.S. Capitol for the inauguration of his successor, Donald Trump, Biden said he was pardoning a pair of Democratic politicians who’d found themselves in legal trouble in recent years, former Kentucky state legislator Gerald Lundergan and ex-Columbia, South Carolina city councilman Ernest Cromartie.
He also said he was commuting the life sentence of American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier and allowing him to live out the remainder of his sentence in home confinement under Department of Justice supervision. Peltier, who has been imprisoned since 1976, was convicted by a federal jury in Fargo, North Dakota for his role in a shootout that claimed the lives of FBI Special Agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler.
