Free Republic

Republican strategist Karl Rove urged Democrats to “go hard” at former President Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, calling the former president’s pledge to free imprisoned rioters a “critical mistake.” “If they were smart, they’d take the January 6 and go hard at it. And they would say, ‘He wants to pardon these people who attacked our Capitol,'” Rove said told MSNBC’s Ari Melber. “One of the critical mistakes made in this campaign is that Donald Trump has now said ‘I’m going to pardon those people because they’re hostages,'” Rove said in the interview, which...

Outgoing Democratic Governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, has granted pardons to 56 inmates, including 40 convicted murderers, since October this year. Despite Edwards’ attempts to address the state’s notorious incarceration rate, critics argue that his latest clemency decisions may have gone a step too far. Critics argue that releasing individuals convicted of serious crimes poses a risk to public safety and undermines the justice system. The anti-prison governor has been at the helm of criminal justice reforms in Louisiana with the aim of shedding the state’s label as “the world’s prison capital.” During Edwards’ tenure, Louisiana has faced scrutiny...

Despite the constant barrage of anti-Trump propaganda from the mainstream media and the unprecedented Department of Justice abuse of the legal system aimed at hamstringing Trump's campaign to be elected to a second term as president, numerous polls indicate that his chances of success in the 2024 election appear to be good. Only 14% of voters say Biden's economic policies have helped them. Forty-six percent say they have been hurt by these policies. His overall approval (33%) vs disapproval (64%) is the worst polling for an incumbent president this far ahead of an election since the advent of the polling...

Governor Ron DeSantis, who continues to slide in the national polls, took a swipe at Trump and MAGA movement during his interview on MSNBC. DeSantis insisted Trump could have pardoned all of the J6ers before he left office. How was President Trump supposed to know that the DOJ and FBI was going to arrest over 1,200 Trump supporters including hundreds who walked inside the open doors on the US Capitol on January 6. Ron DeSantis: It’s interesting on the, on the January 6 protest. I mean, he, he called that rally knowing that that was going to be in DC...

GOP presidential candidate former Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that it was “inappropriate” Republican presidential candidates are promising to pardon former President Donald Trump. Partial transcript as follows: MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. Well, I want to ask you about a number of things in terms of who else is in this race, you have already called on Donald Trump to drop out. You’ve been saying that for some time. Now, he’s not taking your advice. And now we have these new charges on classified documents. Do you think he should be pardoned for the good...

Many find it shocking the Department of Justice (DOJ) could be capable of ginning up false allegations against a former president in a previous election and would again do the same prior to the 2024 election. This shock, however, is a mark of just how drastically conservatives have failed to recognize the long decline of the DOJ and its ultimate transformation into a political subsidiary of a radicalized Democratic Party. Conservatives would do well to observe seminal moments that have led the country’s top law enforcement entity to its present dire state. In that review, all roads ultimately lead back...

Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson vowed Sunday not to issue “blanket pardons” for rioters convicted in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, if he is elected. “First of all, there would be no blanket pardons. Secondly, it was a very serious offense, challenging the fundamentals of our democracy and attempt to overturn the election, and so I view it as seriously, and any pardon application be viewed just like any other pardon application that I viewed as governor. And I would do that as president, but no blanket pardons,” the former Arkansas governor said...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was asked on Thursday about potentially using his pardon power if elected president to offer clemency to Jan. 6 defendants or even Donald Trump -- and while he didn't answer directly, he suggested he would consider it. DeSantis made his comments while appearing on the "The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show" amid an early media blitz one day after launching a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. "A big part of being president is pardon powers. Do you think the Jan. 6 defendants deserve to have their cases examined by a Republican president?...

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that if former President Donald Trump were to pardon convicted January 6 rioters after re-election in 2024, his actions would warrant an impeachment process. Sen. Blumenthal told a CNN reporter on Thursday that a Trump pardon of the January 6 prisoners would be a betrayal of America’s trust.

WASHINGTON (WCMH) – President Joe Biden on Friday pardoned an 80-year-old Columbus woman convicted of killing her abusive husband in 1977. The White House said Biden granted clemency to Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas nearly 50 years after a Washington, D.C. jury convicted her of second-degree murder for fatally shooting her husband, Dr. Yusef Ibn-Tamas, according to court records. Ibn-Thomas, who was 33 years old and pregnant at the time of the shooting, testified her husband repeatedly abused her. Ibn-Tamas, who until recently worked as a nursing director for an Ohio-based healthcare company, was instrumental in moving the judicial system to recognize...

WASHINGTON — Marijuana activists joined by well-known rappers plan to engage in “civil disobedience” outside the White House and Democratic National Committee offices Monday to push President Biden to honor his campaign pledge to free “everyone” in prison for marijuana after he issued limited clemency this month. The activists say Biden’s Oct. 6 mass pardon of about 6,500 people charged federally with pot possession was “misleading” because it didn’t free any of the roughly 2,700 people in federal prison for marijuana dealing. “There’s quite a bit of outrage, actually, in the cannabis community about what just went down,” said Adam...

WASHINGTON — Federal marijuana inmates say they’re shocked that President Biden’s mass-pardon for pot offenders doesn’t actually help them — telling The Post that the historic clemency amounts to a “rancid” pre-midterm elections stunt and a “slap in the face” that fails to do what Biden promised as a candidate. There are about 2,700 federal pot inmates, according to a recent congressional estimate, but none will get out because Biden’s pardon applies only to the roughly 6,500 people convicted federally of simple possession, of whom none are in prison, and to unknown thousands more convicted under local DC law. Biden...

‘By extending a pardon to these individuals, you would enable them an opportunity to begin a new chapter of their lives.’ Less than a day after President Joe Biden announced his administration was pardoning all Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana, Democratic Miami Gardens Sen. Shervin Jones is asking Florida’s chief executive to do the same. On Friday, Jones called on Gov. Ron DeSantis to extend “a similar policy” for all Florida citizens with prior convictions of simple possession of marijuana — having a small quantity of the drug for personal consumption. “As you may know, the majority of...

Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman failed to preside over 33% of the state's Senate legislative sessions as lieutenant governor, but holds a perfect attendance record as chairman of the state's Board of Pardons. [cut] As for the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, which is chaired by Fetterman, the lieutenant governor has had perfect attendance at the quarterly meetings even after his stroke. According to documents obtained through a public records request that were reviewed by Fox News Digital, Fetterman attended every Board of Pardons meeting from March 2019 through December 2021, and video shows him in the April and August...

HARRISBURG, Pa--Pennsylvanians with minor, nonviolent marijuana criminal convictions could be pardoned beginning Thursday in a period until the end of the month under a joint effort from Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. The so-called "one-time, large-scale pardon effort" will allow anyone who has been convicted of possession of marijuana or small amount of personal use to apply. There is no limit to the age of conviction. The application is free, and entirely online...

Former President Trump said on Friday that he would look “very, very seriously” at pardoning those charged in connection with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, if he ran for and became president again. Speaking during a Faith and Freedom event in Nashville, Tenn., Trump said the defendants charged in the Capitol riot were “having their lives totally destroyed and being treated worse than terrorists and murderers,” claiming that most had been “charged with parading through the Capitol.” “And if I become president, someday if I decide to do it, I will be looking at them very, very seriously...

The White House won't rule out granting pardons to Hunter Biden or James Biden, the son and brother of President Joe Biden, as investigations over their international dealings heat up. "That’s not a hypothetical I’m going to entertain," White House communications director Kate Bedingfield told reporters last week when asked during the daily press briefing. "I don’t have anything to add from this podium." Bedingfield was reluctant to address any aspect of the Hunter Biden story, after CNN, The Washington Post, and the New York Times recently published stories about the federal tax probe into Hunter Biden and his foreign...

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) said on Sunday that he disagreed with former President Trump's idea of potentially pardoning people charged in connection with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 of last year. "Of course not, oh, my goodness, no," Sununu said on CNN's "State of the Union" when asked if the rioters who were part of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol should be pardoned.

A former Tennessee governor's administration helped fund a contract murder of a key federal witness decades ago while embroiled in the state's largest political scandal, law enforcement officials announced Wednesday. The new details revealed for the first time Wednesday have elements that ring of a movie: a trusted ally of union boss Jimmy Hoffa gunned down after testifying about a corrupt governor selling prison pardons and a gunman who donned a wig and blackface to throw authorities off the scent. Investigators in Hamilton County, which encompasses Chattanooga, have been chipping away at the 42-year-old cold case of Samuel Pettyjohn since...

President Trump, I pray you, please consider granting pardons to those who attended the January 6, 2021 rally and who inadvertently wandered into an open Capitol Building—opened not by them but by Antifa and other leftist infiltrators. Your supporters are being singled out and persecuted for exercising their First Amendment right to assemble and speak. All available technology and human resources are being utilized by a tyrannical central government to unduly punish simple American citizens. I would also ask you to reconsider and please pardon those American political prisoners in foreign lands whose only crimes expose the very unconstitutional tools...