Barack Obama has been very busy pardoning a growing list of drug dealers, domestic terrorists, killers, and other criminals as his last days in office wind down, but so far he has pardoned neither Edward Snowden, Bowe Bergdahl nor Chelsea Manning – and speculation is now focused on these names as possible beneficiaries of Obama’s overheated pen.
Already President Obama has overtaken the single-day record by pardoning 78 and commuting the sentencing of another 153 criminals, most of whom are in jail for drug trafficking.
Despite that we are living through an epidemic of opioid drug overdoses and deaths across the nation, Obama freed or gave clemency to dozens of criminals convicted of manufacturing and selling illicit drugs including crack cocaine, heroin, and more. Thousands of dollars in fines owed by these criminals were also excused.
But there is a large number of people petitioning for Obama’s favors, among them the three notorious figures most currently in the news: Snowden, Bergdahl, and Manning, The Daily Mail notes.
It may seem likely that Obama could pardon traitor Bergdahl not only because of the link to Islam but because of the gentle treatment Obama afforded the traitorous soldier’s parents. The President’s sympathy for the LGBTQ community may also make a pardon for secrets leaker Chelsea Manning a possibility. But because of his connection to this purported Russian hacking and with Obama’s sudden broadsides against Russia after Hillary Clinton’s loss, a pardon for NSA leaker Edward Snowden may seem less likely. All three are plausible possibilities, despite the outcry by many against Snowden’s pardon.
But there are others being thrust before Obama, too. Bernie Sanders, for instance, wants Obama to pardon Puerto Rican terrorist Oscar López Rivera, the founder of the FALN terror group. FALN is responsible for at least six deaths, 130 serious injuries, and 114 bombings perpetrated throughout the 1970s.
Also on the list is hapless, corrupt former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich, a corrupt Illinois politician who tried to buy the Senate seat Obama vacated to become president. Another on the possible list is murderer Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who killed two FBI agents in 1975.
Whoever Obama adds to his long list of pardons and commutations, though, he has already achieved the record of bestowing presidential favors to more criminals than any other president in history.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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