On January 15, 2025, US President Biden delivered a farewell address to the nation in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC.
Mandel and | Reuters
President Joe Biden Marcus Garvey, a black nationalist who influenced Malcolm X and was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s, was pardoned on Sunday. Biden also pardoned immigrant rights activist Ravi Raghbir and criminal justice reform advocate Kemba Smith Pradia.
Congressional leaders had urged Biden to pardon Garvey. Supporters have long argued that Garvey’s conviction was politically motivated and an attempt to silence the increasingly popular leader for his talk of racial pride.
In 2001, Ragbir was found guilty of non-violent crimes and sentenced to two years in prison. Smith Pradia was a lawyer who was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 1994 on drug charges. President bill clinton The sentence was commuted in 2000.
It’s unclear whether Biden will use his final day in office to pardon those criticized or threatened by the president-elect Donald Trump.
Issuing preemptive pardons — targeting Trump critics for actual or imagined crimes that could be investigated or prosecuted by the incoming administration — would stretch the president’s power in untested ways.
