Click here to view Senator Cotton’s Floor Speech.

Washington, D.C. — Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) today tried to pass a resolution on the Senate floor that condemns President Biden’s commutation of the Kids-for-Cash Judge Michael Conahan. Senate Democrats, in one of their last acts in the majority, blocked this resolution.

Senator Cotton’s remarks are below. A copy of the resolution can be found here.

Senator Cotton: Last week, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 convicted criminals—including drug dealers, fraudsters, and corrupt public officials. These are not sympathetic figures—these are individuals who stole from the poor and poisoned the sick. They tore families apart and menaced communities. They were sent to jail; they belong in jail.

With this action, Joe Biden didn’t just reward 1,500 criminals, he robbed hundreds of thousands of victims of the closure and justice they deserve.

The cruelty of these commutations is only matched by the shameless incompetence of the administration that issued them.

This administration admitted—it admitted—that Joe Biden didn’t individually review these cases. Or for that matter, anyone else individually reviewed the cases. Yet, he nullified the verdict of thousands of jurors and judges anyway.

He also disrespected the countless manhours that federal law enforcement and prosecutors dedicated to solving these cases.

The whole purpose of the presidential pardon power is to correct individual and limited failures of the criminal justice system. It’s in the nature of the power in government itself. We are a legislature we make generally applicable, prospective laws for everyone.

Can those laws in certain cases yield unjust outcomes? Yes, of course, that is the nature of the legislative power—the reason an executive has the pardon power is to mitigate that injustice in specific particular cases. It is not to make generally applicable pardons in a broad set of parameters as white house officials have called it. Certainly not to blindly free hundreds of duly convicted criminals. These blanket commutations demonstrate a gross contempt for our legal system its traditions.

To put President Biden’s actions in context, he issued more commutations in a single day than Donald Trump, George Bush, and Bill Clinton issued in their entire presidencies combined.

Let’s just talk about just a few of the beneficiaries of Joe Biden’s jailbreak:

Jacqueline Mills stole $3 million that was intended for hungry Arkansas kids in low-income families.

Dr. Meera Sachdeva defrauded Medicare by diluting chemotherapy drugs and re-using old needles on cancer patients. At least one patient— at least one, contracted HIV as a result.

Fraudster Paul Burks ran a nearly $1 billion Ponzi scheme that robbed 900,000 investors of their money.

Drug dealer Wendy Hechtman and her husband manufactured and distributed super deadly carfentanyl, unleashing an epidemic of drug overdoses in Omaha.

Another drug dealer, Daniel Fillerup, killed a 31-year-old relapsing addict by selling her fentanyl—which is 50 times stronger than the heroin she thought she was buying.

Shuh-kwahn Hemingway trafficked heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, and guns for the vicious Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Joe Biden even commuted the sentence of the serial killer, Virginia Gray, who was known as the “Black Widow” for murdering two husbands and a boyfriend and collecting insurance money. Perhaps the president would have reconsidered this decision if he knew anything about Ms. Gray. But he didn’t because yet again he and White House officials did not review individual cases on the merits. They didn’t pick up the case file. They didn’t talk to victims or families.

Then, there’s the parade of corrupt public officials. The worst of whom is Michael Conahan—the so-called “cash-for-kids” judge who accepted kickbacks in exchange for his role in sending more than 2,300 children to private detention centers, including an eight-year-old. Again, a judge in Pennsylvania sentenced more than 2,300 children to private juvenile detention centers in return for cash kickbacks.

One man he sent to jail later killed himself. He was just 23 years old—his mother says that she is “shocked” and “hurt” by Joe Biden’s commutation. Yet again the president did not review the case individually.

President Biden also commuted the sentence of an Ohio commissioner who took $450,000 in bribes. He even commuted the sentence of Rita Crundwell, a city comptroller from Illinois, who embezzled $54 million. Crundwell was responsible for not only the biggest city embezzlement scandal in the history of Illinois, she was responsible for the biggest municipal embezzlement scandal in the history of the America up to that time.

Now, I understand that we have disagreements about criminal justice and the democrats don’t always share my view on these things. But for years we’ve heard lectures about the rule of law and how Joe Biden and Democrats are the Defenders of Democracy. Yet, Joe Biden is the one commuting the sentences of the very public officials who most threaten the public trust in our democracy.

The American people also know that Joe Biden issued these commutations for a simple reason. It helps cover up the corrupt pardon that he issued to his corrupt son to protect his family.

I think we should condemn all of these pardons and certainly condemn the president for not individually reviewing the merits of the cases. But again, I understand my democratic colleagues don’t agree with that, so I only offer a resolution to condemn one pardon. Simply one, maybe the worst of them all: the commutation of Michael Conahan, the cash-for-kids judge who took cash kickbacks and bribes to sentence more than 2300 kids to private detention centers. The Judge who put American children put in jail for money. Surely the Senate can condemn this single act of corrupt clemency.

Therefore Mr. President notwithstanding rule 22, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to consideration of Senate resolution 935 which is at the desk. Further I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to the preamble be agreed to and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

…

Senator Cotton: We heard a lot of very troubling cases from the senator from Illinois and its true I generally think presidents have given out improvidential pardons over times and I’m not going to defend many of those cases of pardons. For instance, I’m not going to defend Jimmy Carter pardoning a bunch of draft dodgers discriminately, mostly rich and privileged kids who didn’t do their duty when poor kids from places like Yell County, Arkansas or South Little Rock were doing their duty in Vietnam like my father was. But were not here to talk about Vietnam draft dodgers or who President Trump pardoned or who he might pardon. There is a resolution pending on the floor that specifically condemns Michael Conahan the cash-for-kids-judge who took cash kickbacks to sentence children to private juvenile detention centers. Some words about this judge:

“I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain…Some children took their lives because of this…Frankly, I thought the sentence that the judge got was too light. He deserved to be behind bars, not walking as a free man.”

Strong words—not my words. Those were the words of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, who again called Joe Biden’s clemency decision “absolutely wrong.”

The Senior Senator from Minnesota joined Governor Shapiro and said that she too disagreed with the President’s decision. She said that she QUOTE “Did not like that one.”

Even the Chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party publicly condemned President Biden’s commutations and specifically singled out the commutation of Judge Conahan. The cash-for-kids judge.

This resolution is not partisan, it’s not sweeping, it’s common sense. It’s about a single egregious case that happened because of egregiously bad judgment. The president and his aids set broad parameters and apparently those parameters kickback 1,500 cases and they didn’t even have the time and the decency to say now— let’s look at these cases and see if each one of these people deserve a pardon. Maybe one was an elderly nonviolent offender who had redeemed himself. Whose victims had forgiven him. I could understand clemency in that case. Not the cash-for-kids judge.

It’s only 1500 cases they’ve got thousands of lawyers running around the department of justice could they not individually look at these cases.  I guess not. It’s just another example of how democrats have spent 8 years of accusing Donald trump of doing this that or the other dastardly thing when in reality they are doing much worse.

We heard the Senator for Illinois talking about a pardon for a political loyalist. Who could be more of a political loyalist than a president’s own son. And that’s what Joe Biden did. His first big post-election pardon, pardon his son. Not just for specific crimes to which he has pleaded guilty or for which he had been convicted gun crimes and tax crimes but for all crimes. All crimes that he committed or may have committed. May have committed. For 11 years. That’s almost twice the length of the similar pardon that President Ford gave to President Nixon which I think though condemned at the time most people would now view as an act of political courage.

I don’t think anyone in retrospect is going to think that Joe Biden pardoning his son for every crime he might have committed against the United States for 11 years is ever going to be seen as an act of political courage. Or if he does the same thing for his brother or any other members of his family before noon on January 20th.

So, starting next year, I really won’t have time for crocodile tears about president trumps pardon decisions if the senate can’t bring itself today to condemn one just one single egregious case of abuse of the pardon power. The cash-for-kids judge who sentenced 2300 children to private detention centers in return for cash kickbacks.  

Mr. President, I yield the floor.