Biden and Trump Pardon Their Cronies While Indigenous Activist Leonard Peltier Only Receives Clemency

By Emil McLeod

On January 20^th, as part of a flurry of final executive orders, outgoing president Joe Biden granted clemency to long-time political prisoner Leonard Peltier. Biden commuted the 80-year-old Peltier’s sentence to house arrest. Both Biden and incumbent president Trump have been issuing a wave of pardons for their cronies. Just recently, Biden pardoned his son who was facing federal charges for gun and tax evasion, with Biden stating that he “feared reprisals” against his son Hunter by the incoming Trump administration. In total, Biden issued 39 pardons and approximately 1,500 clemencies in his final hours in power, including clemencies for notorious criminal state bureaucrats like Michael Conahan, who made millions in bribe money from the “cash for kids” scandal, drug trafficker William Thomas Crane, and capitalist hucksters Clarence Counterman and James Burkhart. In a similar move, Trump wasted no time in pardoning his own cronies, including his supporters that participated in the January 6^th riot in 2021, and issuing pardons for drug-dealer capitalists like the founder and CEO of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht.

Leonard Peltier was active in the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1960s and ‘70s. AIM is a group founded by imprisoned indigenous activists that is focused on advancing the democratic rights of indigenous peoples and combating police brutality. The organization reached national headlines due to their 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island, and most famously, their participation in the occupation of the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973 to protest the corrupt tribal president, Richard Wilson and his private armed militia, the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON).

AIM, along with Peltier, were targets of the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program), which was designed to undermine and annihilate left-wing organizations through infiltration and psychological operations. Peltier’s imprisonment has been the subject of numerous books, films, and international awareness campaigns over the four decades of his imprisonment, which have brought worldwide attention to his status as a political prisoner. The continued pressure of these mass initiatives contributed to the decision to grant Peltier clemency; however, this will also no doubt be used opportunistically by the Democrats to attempt to rally support from progressive sectors of the masses to their own mafia.

Peltier was accused of shooting and killing two FBI agents during an armed standoff that took place between indigenous activists and the FBI on June 26^th, 1975 at Pine Ridge Reservation. The subsequent trial contained numerous instances of fabricated evidence and an instance of a supposed eyewitness later recanting his testimony, stating that he was coerced by the FBI to fabricate his story. Peltier was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder in 1977 and sentenced to two life terms in prison.

Biden’s clemency measure is not a pardon which would declare Peltier innocent, but a commutation of his imprisonment from the dungeons of the State to imprisonment in his home. Despite this, retired and active personnel of the State police and security services have expressed their disdain with Peltier receiving clemency, with former FBI Director Christopher Wray, in a private letter to Biden, describing Peltier as a “remorseless killer”. While the current and former presidents have the support of their gangsters to give full pardons to their cronies who preside over the criminal exploitation and oppression of millions of people, even the lessening of the conditions of imprisonment of an indigenous activist must be won through mass struggle.

Photo: Leonard Peltier. Retrieved from Flickr.

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