Internal DOJ emails show pardon officials scrambling after Biden’s late-term clemency actions to determine what some grants covered and to fix mistakes, including in Hunter Biden’s full pardon and a Jan. 17 commutation case.
Many Jan. 17 commutations had not been vetted through the Office of the Pardon Attorney, a deputy pardon attorney wrote, while DOJ said clemency staff also did not individually review most of the roughly 1,500 Dec. 12 group commutations.
One court inquiry forced DOJ to decide whether a commutation for Christopher Spencer also covered a separate 235-month sentence; in Hunter Biden’s case, officials corrected an erroneous notice and spent days authenticating the pardon for court transmission.
The records also show outside criticism: Judge Daniel Hovland said more than a dozen North Dakota commutations were issued without consulting judges, prosecutors or victims, and highlighted fraud cases involving $11.4 million and $28.5 million losses.
DOJ said presidents are not required to use the traditional pardon-office process, but former pardon attorneys called the emails a sharp break from the normal system and evidence of unusually weak coordination.