President Obama commuted the sentences of 102 felons Thursday, including 75 coke dealers and 15 criminals who’d been found guilty of crimes involving firearms, suggesting the president’s tearful pleas to increase gun control laws is little more than opportune political pandering.
A press release issued by the Justice Department shows each of the 102 criminals had one or more drug-related charges, the vast majority of them for crimes involving cocaine or methamphetamines. Most had been found guilty of “intent to distribute” on top of their possession charges, while more than a few had been conspirators in drug trafficking schemes.
One guy, Andre Lefell Reese, had been found guilty of “distribution of less than five grams of cocaine base within 1,000 feet of public elementary school and aiding and abetting” and “possession with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base within 1,000 feet of public elementary school.” Reese was sentenced to life imprisonment with 10 years’ supervised release back in 1998. President Obama knocked his sentence down to 25 years in prison.
On Aug. 3, President Obama “made history” by commuting the sentences of 214 federal inmates, including 67 persons serving life sentences. The move marked the largest single-day commutation record in history and brought the total number of shortened sentences under Obama to a whopping 562 – more than the past nine presidents combined.
Less than a month later, on Aug. 31, the DOJ announced Obama had commuted the sentences of another 111 federal inmates, bringing the total to 673.
Adding in the 102 criminals whose sentences were just shortened Thursday, President Obama’s track record of commuting sentences of felons and drug-dealers has reached a staggering 775.
Ironically – or perhaps by political design – Obama’s habit of shortening the sentences of dozens of drug dealers with firearms charges are hilariously juxtaposed against his self-righteous lectures on gun control. Obama has famously charged Congress to impose stricter laws on the buying and selling of guns, claiming at one CNN town hall that so-called gun show “loopholes” are why “criminals and people who shouldn't have guns are able to get guns.” The anti-gun president has repeatedly blamed acts of terrorism on gun lobbyists rather than radical jihadists, all while skirting Congress with scores of mandates dictating rules on the private buying and selling of firearms.
But considering the president’s apparent dedication to putting firearm-toting drug dealers back on the streets, it’s no wonder many Americans see Obama’s agenda as merely another attack on law-abiding citizens. So rather than focusing on non-existent gaps in the gun show system, maybe the presidential override loophole is the flaw we should fix.