This Biden Pardon May Already Have Caused Innocent Deaths

Former President Joe Biden’s last-minute clemency decisions included pardoning his son Hunter, Joe Biden’s siblings and their spouses, and commuting the capital sentences of almost every federal prisoner on death row. They have drawn a boatload of public attention and justified criticism. Indeed, some will likely cost people their lives. 

That is clear in the pardon Biden issued to arms trafficker Viktor Bout. Last October, The Wall Street Journal reported that, in August 2024, the Houthis in Yemen sent emissaries to Moscow to purchase $10 million in automatic weapons. There, according to the WSJ’s sources (which included a European security official), the Houthi agents met Viktor Bout, an infamous arms trafficker responsible for perhaps hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Bout once was the Number 2 person on America’s Most Wanted List, right after Osama bin Laden, to whom Bout had sold weapons. As Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun explained in their book Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible, Bout was a former Soviet Air Force lieutenant colonel.

After the Soviet Union fell, he made a career out of selling military-grade weapons such as disassembled attack helicopters, tanks, surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, artillery rounds, AK-47 automatic rifles, sniper rifles, and night-vision equipment. He became “the preeminent figure atop the world’s multibillion-dollar contraband weapons sale, an underground commerce that is outpaced in illicit profits only by global narcotics sales.” 

Bout sold weapons to any despot with cash. He “was chummy with a succession of African dictators, including Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko and Liberia’s Charles Taylor, the latter of whom paid him in conflict diamonds and whose child soldiers operated the antique Antonov cargo planes that Bout sold him,” Yahoo News Senior Correspondent Michael Weiss wrote. 

In Sierra Leone, for example, Bout supplied the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with weapons that enabled RUF fighters “to carry out campaigns that were as chilling and destructive as their names: ‘Operation No Living Thing’ and ‘Operation Pay Yourself.’” Those were led by commanders who “dubbed themselves with equally mordant nicknames: Kill Me Quick, Superman, Poison, Mosquito, and Mosquito Killer.” Thousands of “survivors” were maimed by the RUF, which “often mocked their victims before amputating their limbs” by “asking them if they wanted to be ‘short-sleeved’ or ‘long-sleeved.’” 

Bout eventually was arrested for offering to sell 700–800 surface-to-air missiles and 20,000–30,000 automatic weapons to undercover federal agents posing as Colombian guerillas. Convicted of conspiring to kill U.S. nationals, and of conspiring to support a terrorist organization, Bout was sentenced to a lengthy prison term. 

The surprise came in 2023. President Joe Biden commuted Bout’s sentence so Biden could trade him to Russia for Brittney Griner. Who was she? Griner was not a member of Médecins Sans Frontières, a renowned cancer researcher, or a lifelong humanitarian kidnapped while helping the ill and destitute. She was a basketball player arrested and convicted in Russia of possessing cannabis oil, an outlawed substance, a criminal offense she never denied committing.

Yes, you read that right: Biden traded a mass murderer for a basketball player. That she is black, a lesbian, and a cannabis-product user — three political constituencies of Biden’s — surely had nothing to do with the trade for her release.

We criticized Biden’s decision as a self-serving, feckless, shameless, and hopelessly corrupt act of raw political power, done only to serve Democrats’ own selfish interests, by pleasing groups to which Griner belonged. Most commentators denounced the deal. An anonymous official in Biden’s own Justice Department described it as “madness,” and Democrat former presidents — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama — remained resoundingly silent over its legitimacy or reasonableness.

If Bout had simply gone off to the Old Folks Home for Mass Murderers, we would have — gladly — admitted our fears that Biden’s decision will cost lives were mistaken. But it appears that Bout did not have a change of heart along the road to Damascus. Bout might be selling automatic weapons to the Houthis so they can kill a new batch of innocent people. The WSJ said that the deal had not yet been consummated, but it’s unlikely Bout was merely acting like a Walmart “greeter.” 

Presidents have responsibilities that no other official bears. The only official elected by the nation, he is the nation’s representative to the world and commander-in-chief. The burden of protecting the nation forces him to subordinate the desires of interest groups, political parties, and even his family and friends to the those of the people who live here.

Doing that responsibly demands that the president project strength and never play partisan politics when using his authority. He must be willing, without hesitation, to sacrifice his own political future to protect the nation he willingly chose to lead. 

By trading Griner for Bout, Biden grossly failed the duties the nation demands of him. To satisfy three different constituencies whose votes he hoped to secure, Biden put his own interests ahead of the nation’s and released a monster back into the world.

Whatever could be said about Biden’s mental faculties — he has lost whatever little fastball he once might have had — the L’affaire Griner-Bout proves that he has no character or mettle comparable to what George Washington or John Kennedy proved each one had. Nancy Pelosi’s completely unserious suggestion that Biden should have a place on Mount Rushmore is equal parts disgusting and sacrilegious.

Most of the nation likely didn’t read the WSJ story about the Bout-Houthi meeting or understand its significance. But the Griner-Bout trade should greatly concern all Americans who care about the security of our country and what other nations think about ours. Perceptions of American competence and seriousness that affect issues like deterrence and our credibility as a partner in security or trade. 

The decision to trade a mass murderer for a sports figure who violated the law of the country where she worked part-time reveals that we had a president with the character of a Tammany Hall huckster. Biden’s repeated lies that he would not pardon his son Hunter prove that, as Sen. Tom Cotton described it, Joe’s word is “trash.”

But there is a difference between a decision that is merely sleazy and one that is potentially deadly. Biden’s partisan, cheap, self-serving short-sightedness as to the Griner-Bout exchange could have persuaded foreign nations that some United States leaders care more about their personal electoral success than about the nation’s 340-plus million people. If so, we have a much bigger problem on our hands than letting Hunter Biden go scot-free. 

Is America, via its chief public officers, savvy and disciplined enough to see to its long-term interests, or is it so besotted with the cheap liquor of pop-culture gratification that it is willing to trade security and principle to make a preferred constituency happy? We need to consider the nation’s long-term interests and recognize that there are more important concerns at stake than appeasing whatever superstar Hollywood actor, singer-songwriter, or professional athlete say they prefer in their chief executive.

By trading Bout for Griner, Joseph Robinette Biden proved once again that he was not fit to be anywhere near the Oval Office. Americans who voted for him should ruminate on how they won’t be so easily fooled next time.

Paul J. Larkin is the John, Barbara, and Victoria Rumpel senior legal research fellow for the Heritage Foundation. Dakota L. Wood is the owner and CEO of Hot Gates Consulting, LLC.