President Joe Biden issues pardons ahead of new year
President Joe Biden has issued six presidential pardons, five of whom to people with prior drug convictions and another to a woman who killed her alleged domestic abuser.
Biden has now issued a total of nine presidential pardons in his first two years in office. By comparison, President Donald Trump had issued seven in his first two years, while President Barack Obama had issued nine two years into his presidency.
Obama and Trump issued most of their pardons in their final months as president.
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had not issued any pardons in their first two years in office.
Of the pardons issued on Friday, the one of Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas was the only one not drug related. Ibn-Tamas was pregnant at the age of 33 when “her husband beat her, verbally abused her, and threatened her,” the White House said. She was convicted of second-degree murder for killing him.
Now at age 80, she continues to serve as a case manager for a health care company in Columbus, Ohio.