CHICAGO, IL
Former U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. is asking the assistance of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, in advocating for pardons for himself and other non-violent felons who have served their sentences.
Jackson Jr., who served in Congress for 17 years, resigned in 2012 during a criminal investigation for conspiring to defraud his reelection campaign of $750,000 over a span of 10 years.
He says in a letter to Hunter Biden there are 77 million Americans who have served their sentences, have not committed any new offenses, but are still imprisoned by guilt, shame and blame.
Jackson Jr. says that only a complete, absolute and unconditional pardon from the President of the United States can give these “debt-paid fellow citizens” a “new life on earth.”
His letter comes after his father, Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., made a similar appeal to President Biden earlier this month.
In it the civil rights leader urged Biden’s “consideration for a full and absolute pardon for your son, and for mine …”
Jackson Jr. says he is appealing to Hunter to intercede because he feels a kindred spirit – father to father, and son to son – to ask on behalf of the many other sons and daughters throughout our country who don’t have a voice.
Coincidentally, on the same day the elder Jackson sent his letter to Biden, the president’s son was granted a “full and unconditional pardon” for offenses from Jan. 1, 2014 through Dec. 1, 2024.
“Perhaps for such a time as this, you too are called to be an advocate for the full pardon of the debt-paid felon,” Jackson Jr. writes in the letter. “I do not advocate for pardons for serious offenders – there are those who must be incarcerated until they are rehabilitated. Today, I am advocating for the debt-paid felon who remains under ‘judgement,’ stigmatized in the eyes of our government and society because of a modern creation of ‘class’ called felonization.”
