Righteous Biden Pardons And Trump’s Unpardonable Pardons
In his final hours in office, President Joe Biden pardoned an historic icon of the early civil rights movement; a gravely ill, 80-year-old native American rights leader; an immigrants’ rights activist; a gun violence prevention advocate who was convicted of a nonviolent drug offense in 1998; and another non-violent drug offender who later became the first Black speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Compare Biden’s gestures of compassion, fairness and justice with this week’s trump pardons.
In office for less than a week, trump pardoned all 1,500 criminals and defendants involved in the bloody January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by trump supporters, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges in connection with the insurrection that was inspired by trump. The sweeping pardons included individuals who assaulted police officers, witnessed firsthand by lawmakers in the chaos on Capitol.
Trump also pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison nearly a decade ago for creating the Silk Road, a website law enforcement called the “most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace” on the internet — best-known for sales of illicit drugs.
Ulbricht, 41, created and operated the darknet market website Silk Road from 2011 until his arrest in 2013. He was imprisoned from 2013 until last week when he was pardoned by trump.
Silk Road operated as a hidden service on the Tor network and facilitated the sale of narcotics and other illegal products and services. In October 2013, the FBI arrested Ulbricht and took Silk Road offline. In 2015, he was convicted of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, distributing narcotics by means of the internet, conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to commit computer hacking.
Federal prosecutors also alleged that Ulbricht had paid $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting at least five people, because they purportedly threatened to reveal the Silk Road enterprise. Prosecutors believe no contracted killing actually occurred.
On February 4, 2015, Ulbricht was convicted on all counts and on May 29, 2015, he was sentenced to double life imprisonment plus 40 years, without the possibility of parole. Ulbricht was also ordered to pay about $183 million in restitution, based on the total sales of illegal drugs and counterfeit IDs through Silk Road. He was rejected in appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2017 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018.
Uhlbricht is a professed libertarian and became a cause celebre among libertarians. Last May, candidate trump promised at the 2024 Libertarian National Convention that if re-elected President, he would commute Ulbricht’s sentence on his first day in office. In June 2024, then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a similar promise.
In the November 2024 issue of Reason magazine, the 2024 Libertarian nominee for president, Chase Oliver, said, “I would like to see [Trump], if he were elected, commute Ross Ulbricht’s sentence. Frankly, if I were president, I would give him a full pardon.”
Trump said he gladly issued a full pardon.
“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!” trump posted on his social network site.
Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses who were serving disproportionately long sentences compared with today’s sentencing guidelines. A few of the more notable commutations or pardons follows.
Marcus Garvey
Biden granted a posthumous pardon to revolutionary civil rights and human rights leader Marcus Garvey, known by some as the Black Moses who was a seminal influence on leaders of the world movement for racial justice, such as Malcom X and South African President Nelson Mandela.
Garvey’s descendants have sought a pardon for nearly two decades, including a request shortly after Biden was elected and a few months after the police killing of George Floyd sparked a nationwide discussion over police violence and historic inequities. Activists said that Garvey should be pardoned and recognized as part of a list of historic racially-motivated wrongs.
Garvey was born in Jamaica and was 53 when he died in 1940. He is considered a national hero in his homeland where he was buried in Kingston, Jamaica’s National Heroes Park.
Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in the early 1920s, but his supporters claimed the case was manufactured to discredit him during a time of great racial unrest in the U.S. He served two years of a five-year prison sentence, which was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge, who wanted to derail potential civil violence.
Garvey became known around the world as the leader of the “back to Africa” movement, which sought to create a self-governing Black nation. He also championed the black nationalist movement and founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association to press for advancements for people of color across the globe.
An FBI report noted that “in the aftermath of World War I, the FBI began investigating Garvey’s activities, looking to deport him as an undesirable alien.” After his release, Garvey was forced to leave the country and was deported to Jamaica.
Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL, commonly known as UNIA), through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa. Garvey was a Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist whose ideas came to be known as Garveyism. The tricolor red, black and green UNIA flag is also known as the pan-African flag, the Afro-American flag and the Black Liberation flag. Created in 1920 as a response to racism against African Americans, the red symbolizes the blood of martyrs, the black symbolizes the skin of Africans, and the green represents the vegetation of the African land.
Garvey emphasized unity between Africans and the African diaspora, and campaigned for an end to European colonial rule in Africa, through political unification of the continent. Garvey’s Black separatist views led him to form a strange relationship with white racists like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the interest of advancing their shared goals of racial separatism. Garvey’s strategy caused a breach with other prominent African-American civil rights activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois who promoted racial integration.
Garvey believed that Black people should be financially independent from white-dominated societies and created started various businesses including the Negro Factories Corporation and Negro World newspaper. In 1919, he became President of the Black Star Line shipping and passenger company, designed to forge a link between North America and Africa and facilitate African-American migration to Liberia.
In 1923 Garvey was convicted of mail fraud for selling the company’s stock and was imprisoned in the U.S. penitentiary in Atlanta, Ga. Garvey blamed a vendetta against him by Jewish people and Catholic people, claiming that they were prejudiced against him because of his links to the KKK.
To some, Garvey was a demagogue who collaborated with white supremacists and used violent rhetoric and prejudice against mixed-race people and Jews. But Garvey also was praised for encouraging a sense of pride and self-worth among Africans and the African diaspora amid widespread poverty, discrimination and colonialism. His ideas exerted a considerable influence on such movements as Rastafari, the Nation of Islam and the Black Power Movement.
In her 1972 book, “The Black Scholar,” Milfred C.Fierce wrote that “Regardless of what history will write about him, and his personal shortcomings notwithstanding, Marcus Garvey was undoubtedly the peerless champion of his race. He was a bulwark for the world-wide organization of people of African descent.”
Fierce wrote that Garvey has been described as “the Black Moses of his race, a group psychologist and an idealist planner, an iconoclast, an egotist, a zealot, a charlatan and a buffoon.”
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Jamaica in 1965 where he proclaimed Garvey “was the first man of color to lead and develop a mass movement. He was the first man to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny on a mass scale and level. And he was the first man to make the Negro feel that he was somebody.”
Leonard Peltier
Peltier, 80, a Native American activist, spent nearly 50 years in federal prison after he was convicted of killing two FBI agents in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier has always maintained his innocence, claiming that he participated in the shootout as self-defense, but insisting he did not kill either agent. The case has been widely criticized over claims of trial misconduct, including conflicting testimonies, withheld evidence and potential bias among jurors.
In a statement, Biden referred to Peltier’s age and “severe health ailments” and said the decision will allow Peltier to serve the remainder of his life sentence at home without pardoning him for his crimes.
Peltier, 80, a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was convicted of two counts of first degree murder in the deaths of two FBI agents in a June 26, 1975, shooting on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment.
Peltier’s appeals for clemency were supported by world-famous civil rights advocates, including Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama), Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and activist Rigoberta Menchú, and Mother Teresa. International and national government entities such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, the European Parliament and the Belgian Parliament, all passed resolutions in favor of Peltier’s clemency. Several human rights groups, including the International Federation for Human Rights and Amnesty International launched campaigns advocating for Peltier’s clemency.
In the United States, the Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, the Committee of Concerned Scientists, Inc., the National Lawyers Guild, and the American Association of Jurists all supported clemency for Peltier.
At the time of the shootout, Peltier was an active member of AIM, an indigenous rights advocacy group that worked to combat the racism and police brutality experienced by Native Americans. Peltier is of Lakota, Dakota, and Anishinaabe descent, and was raised among the Turtle Mountain Chippewa and Fort Totten Sioux Nations of North Dakota.
He ran for president of the United States in 2004, winning the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party, and receiving 27,607 votes, limited to the ballot in California. In 2020, he ran for vice president on the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) ticket with Gloria La Riva as the presidential candidate. For health reasons, Peltier withdrew from those tickets on August 1, 2020.
Peltier was one of 13 children, born at the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa near Belcourt, N.C. In September 1953, at the age of nine, Peltier was enrolled at the Wahpeton Indian School in Wahpeton, N.D, an Indian boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
Children were typically immersed in the Anglo-American culture of the upper class. Schools forced removal of indigenous cultural signifiers: cutting the children’s hair, having them wear American-style uniforms, forbidding them from speaking their mother tongues, and replacing their tribal names with English language names (saints’ names under some religious orders) for use at the schools, as part of assimilation and to Christianize them.
The schools were usually harsh, especially for younger children who had been forcibly separated from their families and forced to abandon their Native American identities and cultures. Children sometimes died in the school system due to infectious disease. Investigations of the later 20th century revealed cases of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
Peltier remained at the school through the ninth grade when he returned to the Turtle Mountain Reservation to live with his father.
In the 1960s, Peltier became involved in a variety of causes championing Native American civil rights. By the early 1970s, Peltier learned about factional tensions at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota between supporters of Richard Wilson, elected tribal chairman in 1972, and traditionalist members of the Lakota tribe.
AIM was founded by urban Indians in Minneapolis in 1968 at a time of rising native American activism for civil rights. AIM member Dennis Banks invited Peltier to join and Peltier became an official member of AIM in 1972.
Wilson had created a private militia, known as the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON), whose members were reputed to have attacked political opponents. Protests over a failed impeachment hearing of Wilson led to the AIM and Lakota armed takeover of Wounded Knee reservation in February 1973. Federal forces responded and laid siege for 71 days, an incident which became known as the Wounded Knee Occupation. Government agents demanded that Wilson resign while Peltier spent most of the occupation in a Milwaukee, Wis., jail charged with attempted murder related to a different protest. Peltier was released on bail at the end of April and joined an AIM protest outside the federal building in Milwaukee.
In 1975, Peltier traveled as a member of AIM to the Pine Ridge I Reservation where he worked to reduce violence among political opponents. At the time, Peltier was a fugitive wanted in Wisconsin for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for the attempted murder of an off-duty Milwaukee police officer. He was acquitted of the attempted murder charge in February 1978.
On June 26, 1975, FBI Special Agents Ronald Arthur Williams, 27, and Jack Ross Coler, 28, returned to Pine Ridge to continue searching for Jimmy Eagle, a young man wanted for questioning in connection with the recent assault of two ranch hands and theft of a pair of cowboy boots.
Sometime after 11 a.m., Williams and Coler, driving two separate unmarked cars, spotted and followed what has been described as a red pick-up truck or van, but was in fact a white-over-orange Chevy Suburban Carryall carrying Peltier, Norman Charles, and Joe Stuntz. Charles had met with the two FBI agents the evening before, when the agents told Charles that they were looking for Eagle.
The Suburban turned off US 18 into the Jumping Bull Ranch, where AIM had been allowed to camp, The occupants of the Suburban got out and a firefight ensued. Williams radioed for reinforcements after both agents had been shot. FBI Agent Gary Adams was the first to respond to the call for backup and he and the other BIA officers also came under gunfire. They were unable to reach Coler and Williams as both agents died within the first 10 minutes of gunfire.
It was later determined that Norman Charles fired at the agents with a stolen British .308 rifle and that Peltier had an AR-15 rifle.
The AIM activists drove Williams’s into the AIM camp farther south on the Jumping Bull property where Darrelle Butler allegedly took Williams’ handgun, Peltier took Coler’s, and Robert Robideau took Coler’s .308 and shotgun. Stuntz was found wearing Coler’s FBI jacket after he was shot and killed by a BIA agent later that day.
At least three men were arrested in connection with the shooting: Peltier, Robert Robideau, and Darrelle “Dino” Butler, all AIM members who were present at the Jumping Bull compound at the time of the shootings.
An Oregon state trooper stopped an RV driven by Peltier on Sept. 5 and Peltier fled on foot after a brief shootout. Peltier’s thumbprint and Coler’s handgun were discovered under the RV’s front seat. On February 6, 1976, Peltier and Frank Blackhorse were arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Hinton, Alberta, Canada.
A federal jury found Robideau and Butler not guilty on grounds of self-defense because forensic evidence showed they had not executed the agents and the government had no witnesses at the time who could prove the two men knew they were attacking FBI agents.
In Peltier’s trial, the FBI had forensic evidence and eyewitnesses that together linked Peltier directly to the killings of the officers. The forensic evidence showed that the two agents were killed by close-range shots to their heads, when they were already defenseless because of previous gunshot wounds. Consequently, Peltier could not submit a self-defense testimony like the other activists had.
In April 1977, Peltier was convicted for killing Coler and Williams and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.[
Some organizations have raised doubts about Peltier’s guilt and the fairness of his trial, based on alleged inconsistencies in the FBI and prosecution’s handling of the case. Two witnesses in the initial trial recanted their statements that they said were made under duress at the hands of the FBI. At least one witness was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony against Peltier.
Peltier was represented by Kevin Sharp, who also served as U.S. District Judge in Tennessee and as Chief Judge form 2014 to 2017. During a June 8, 2024, interview, Sharp said that Pine Ridge was “a powder keg with the GOON Squad operating there with the government’s help. AIM was there to protect those who were not part of the GOON Squad.”
Sharp said there were many murders and assaults in a three-year timeframe.
“Leonard did not shoot the agents, and the FBI knew this but withheld evidence. The court of appeals acknowledged this but couldn’t overturn the conviction due to legal standards,” Sharp said.
Over the years in prison, Peltier’s health has declined and he suffers from diabetes which led to impaired vision. He also has kidney issues and was susceptible to strokes.
Darryl Chambers
Biden pardoned Darryl “Wolfie” Chambers, a gun violence prevention advocate who was convicted of a nonviolent drug offense in 1998 and sentenced to 17 years in prison. Chambers became an advocate for gun violence prevention and second chance initiatives. He also is founder and Executive Director of The Center for Structural Equity.
Don Scott
Biden pardoned Virginia House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, who was convicted of a nonviolent drug offense in 1994 and served seven years in prison. After Scott was released, he became an attorney and was ultimately elected to the Virginia legislature in 2019, then became the first Black speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates in 2024.
In addition, Biden pardoned immigrant rights activist Ravi Ragbir and criminal justice reform advocate Kemba Smith Pradia.