The Dispatch
Share this post
Did President Obama Issue Clemency to 18,000 People?
thedispatch.com

Did President Obama Issue Clemency to 18,000 People?

A claim by Joe Biden is exaggerated by a factor of almost 10.

Khaya Himmelman
Oct 7, 2020
18
7
Share this post
Did President Obama Issue Clemency to 18,000 People?
thedispatch.com

On Monday night, Democratic nominee Joe Biden appeared on NBC for a live town hall discussion from Miami, where he took questions from anchor Lester Holt and a small audience of undecided voters.

During a segment on criminal justice reform, Holt brought up President Trump’s criticism of the Obama administration’s work on the matter. 

Holt told Biden: “He points out in a criminal justice reform bill. You and Barack Obama served at a time when you had both houses of Congress and still couldn’t get some of these things done.”

In response, Biden claimed that the Obama administration granted clemency to 18,000 people. “We let 18,000 people got [sic] clemency. He got two or three where he’s talking about,” said Biden. 

Although Obama granted clemency to more people than any other president since Truman, the number doesn’t come close to 18,000.

 According to statistics from the Department of Justice, during his presidency, Obama granted 212 pardons and 1,715 commutations for a total of 1,927 acts of clemency. These numbers come closest to Truman, who from 1945 to 1953 granted 1,913 pardons and 118 commutations, per the Department of Justice.

The Obama administration received an especially high number of clemency requests (pardons and commutations)—a total of 36,544. This surge in requests can be attributed, to some extent, to the 2014 Clemency Initiative, in which the Department of Justice encouraged “qualified federal intimates to have their sentences commuted, or reduced, by the President of the United States.” Indeed, Obama granted more commutations than any other president in the nation’s history. 

President Trump, by contrast, according to the Department of Justice, has granted 27 pardons and 11 commutations for a total of 38 acts of clemency thus far. 

If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.

This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 U.S. Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here for more.

Photograph by Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images.

7
Share this post
Did President Obama Issue Clemency to 18,000 People?
thedispatch.com
7 Comments

Create your profile

0 subscriptions will be displayed on your profile (edit)

Skip for now

Only Dispatch Members only can comment on this post

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.

Dante Longfellow
Oct 7, 2020

Isn't the simple response that Biden meant 18-hundred instead of 18-thousand? A mistake, sure.

Expand full comment
ReplyCollapse
3 replies
Joe
Oct 7, 2020

What does granting clemency to a few have to do with passing legislation when you have the house and senate?

This doesn't even address the question.

Certainly they could have modified the federal criminal code to be less draconian or systemically racist if that is what they are claiming.

Expand full comment
ReplyCollapse
1 reply
5 more comments…
TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2022 The Dispatch
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Publish on Substack Get the app
Substack is the home for great writing