WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama plans to grant clemency to federal offenders “more aggressively” during the remainder of his presidency, he said in a sit-down interview with The Huffington Post on Friday.
Obama has faced criticism for rarely using his power to grant pardons and commutations. In December, he commuted the sentences of eight federal drug offenders, including four who had been sentenced to life. That brought his total number of commutations to 18.
Obama said he had granted clemency so infrequently because of problems in the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney. The former head of that office, who was appointed during the George W. Bush administration, resigned in April amid criticism from criminal justice advocates.
