As RedState previously reported, President Joe Biden decided to drop an unwelcome Christmas surprise on the families of murder victims whose killers were on federal death row by commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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“… 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,” Biden’s said in a statement posted to the White House website Monday.
In the next sentence, Biden confirmed he was doing this in part to spite President-Elect Donald Trump, a proponent of capital punishment, saying, “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
SEE ALSO–>> ‘Abhorrent Decision’: Trump Team Responds to Biden’s Death Row Commutations
Biden’s announcement came some two weeks after he commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoned 39, which was done just a few days after he issued a sweeping pardon of his son, convicted felon Hunter Biden, in what many political observers view as Democrat privilege run wildly amok.
Though the death row commutations were particularly infuriating, some have suggested that maybe it wasn’t Biden himself who was the driving force behind the move. Among them is Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who during a Fox News interview Thursday noted that he believed Biden didn’t even know what he was signing:
Look, I think what’s happening with Joe Biden, nobody thinks he even knows about these clemencies or these pardons. This is the radical left staff that has been running this administration for the last four years. And so I agree with President Trump in what he said about these 37 individuals who have been granted clemency.
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Donalds then expanded on his point, stating that this was something the radical left wanted to do all along but now had the chance to do because, in his view, Biden – for all intents and purposes – is not in charge anymore (if he ever was at all) in the final weeks of his presidency:
This is outrageous. They should not have a Merry Christmas, to be perfectly blunt with you. But this is because we have the radical left doing all the things they’ve been wanting to do for a very long time on their way out the door while Joe Biden is at the beach or taking a nap or whatever it is he’s doing. This is a travesty. We are a country that doesn’t have a president right now.
Watch:
NEW: Congressman Byron Donalds says nobody actually believes Biden was the one who issued these pardons and commutations for criminals on de*th row.
HOST: Do you think Biden knew what he was signing?
DONALDS: “No. I don’t.”
“This is the radical left staff that has been running… pic.twitter.com/y9ZsNigJPH
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 27, 2024
Honestly, I think at this point that a convincing case could be made that Donalds is not that far off in suggesting Biden didn’t have a clue what he was signing off on with the death row commutations. Quite frankly, since the election, the few times he’s been seen or given speeches he’s looked and sounded even worse than he did in the months leading up to Election Day.
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On the other hand, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that he knew exactly what he was doing considering, to Donalds’ point, Biden’s guiding force for the entire four years of his presidency has been the activist left, who have used Biden as a vessel to try and foist the worst of their ideas (and there are many) on the American people by way of executive decisions/actions/orders.
Whatever the case may be, the commutations for the federal death row inmates stink, and will be yet another negative mark on Biden’s long and troublesome political legacy.
FLASHBACK: Byron Donalds Brings the Fire After Hillary Clinton Insults Trump Supporters
