Outgoing President Joe Biden said Thursday he had commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoned 39 others, in what the White House called the largest single-day act of clemency in US history.
The move comes just over a week after the 82-year-old Biden pardoned his troubled son Hunter, something he had previously promised not to do, prompting anger from both sides of the political divide.
"America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances," Biden said in a statement announcing the action. "As President, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation."
Democrat Biden -- who hands over power to Republican Donald Trump on January 20 -- is following in the footsteps of many lame-duck presidents who have issued a flurry of acts of clemency in their final days in the Oval Office.
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