Biden's end-of-term clemency, from commuted death sentences to the autopen fight

The largest acts came after the 2024 election. On December 12, Biden commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who had been released to home confinement and pardoned 39 others, in what was described as the biggest single-day act of clemency.^[2] Among them was a former judge in Pennsylvania's "kids for cash" scandal, which angered some families.^[8] On December 23, ahead of Donald Trump's plans to resume federal executions, he commuted 37 federal death sentences, leaving three men, including Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, on death row.^[3] Victims' families reacted with relief, defiance and anger.^[9] Biden's pardon of his son, Hunter, that month is followed in a separate arc.

His last weeks in office brought a final round. In January 2025, he set the presidential record for individual pardons and commutations with clemency for nonviolent drug offenders.^[1] He commuted the life sentence of Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist convicted of killing two FBI agents in a shootout, who left prison in February after 49 years,^[10][11] and pardoned Virginia House Speaker Don Scott and the Black nationalist Marcus Garvey.^[12] On his last day, he issued pre-emptive pardons for his brother James and his wife, Sara; his sister, Valerie, and her husband, John Owens; and his brother Francis.^[4] Anthony Fauci's pardon is followed in its own arc.

The pardons then became a political target. In March 2025, Trump claimed that Biden's pardons were void because they had been signed by autopen, a claim legal experts disputed.^[6] The New York Times reported in July that Biden's chief of staff had approved autopen signatures on pardons on his final day in office.^[13] In October, the House Oversight Committee's final report called autopen-signed pardons "void" and questioned whether Biden had been aware of their substance, and Republicans sent the report to the Justice Department; critics said it advanced contested claims about his mental state.^[5][14]