In a searing and virtually unprecedented presidential rebuke, Barack Obama declared embattled Republican White House nominee Donald Trump “unfit” to be president Tuesday and called on party leaders to disown him.
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To date, President Obama has granted 562 commutations: more commutations than the previous nine presidents combined and more commutations than any individual president in almost a century.
Among those affected by Wednesday’s presidential order were 67 individuals serving life sentences – nearly all for nonviolent drug crimes, although a few also were charged with firearms violations related to their drug activities.
– Charles Bynum of Torrance, who was sentenced in 2003 to life in prison in Florida for conspiracy to possess and distribute material containing methamphetamine.
Clarence Ward, of Hollywood, has been serving a life term in prison since 2004 for possession with intent to distribute cocaine base and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
In a statement posted on Facebook, Obama said those granted clemency are “deserving of a second chance”.
One hundred and twenty-eight prisoners will have their sentences expire December 1, according to data from the White House. And the United States Sentencing Commission has revised guidelines for drug offenders, so far retroactively reducing sentences for more than 9,500 inmates, almost three-quarters of them black or Hispanic. “While we continue to work to act on as many clemency applications as possible, only legislation can bring about lasting change to the federal system”.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder spoke on the DOJ’s shift away from seeking the harshest punishments for drug offenders – which disproportionately affected black communities in the US. “And today, I’m commuting the sentences of an additional 214 men and women who are just as deserving of a second chance”.
Though there’s broad bipartisan support for a criminal justice overhaul, what had looked like a promising legislative opportunity for Obama’s final year has mostly fizzled.
“He’s been weak, he’s been ineffective”, Republican candidate Mr Trump said of Mr Obama in a Fox News interview on Tuesday. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have sought to overhaul criminal justice laws that require nonviolent drug offenders to be sentenced to prison rather than treatment.
The Democratic president noted that leading Republicans, including Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, and one-time Republican presidential nominee John McCain, a US senator from Arizona, had criticized Trump for his remarks but have stood by their endorsements of him. “But what really happened is that a group of fellow citizens finally got the punishment they deserved”.
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Obama piled on as Trump’s campaign reeled from multiple self-inflicted scandals, calling the 70-year-old mogul “woefully unprepared” and “unfit to serve as president”.
