Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Commuting federal death sentences would include Tree of Life shooter, McConnell says

“President Biden’s decision earlier this month to pardon his son may well have set a unique and unfortunate precedent,” the Kentucky senator said on the Senate floor.

Tree of Life synagogue
Memorials for the victims of the Tree of Life*Or Simcha Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Oct. 31, 2018. Credit: Dmitry Brant via Wikimedia Commons.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) urged U.S. President Joe Biden not to heed the call in a letter from 21 retired, liberal judges to commute the sentences of all of those on federal death row.

“President Biden’s decision earlier this month to pardon his son may well have set a unique and unfortunate precedent. But abuse of the presidential pardon doesn’t stop there,” the Kentucky senator said on the Senate floor on Dec. 18. “Last week, the president went on to commute 1,500 sentences, and the way liberal activists see it, he should have done even more.”

“More than 20 liberal retired judges—including the Boston radical, who recommended the disgraced pro-crime U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins—have now urged the president to turn his eye to federal death sentences,” McConnell said.

“If the president heeded these former judges’ call, it would mean commuting the death sentences of the perpetrator of the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh,” the senator added.

Robert Bowers was convicted of murdering 11 people at the Tree of Life*Or Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh on the morning of Oct. 27, 2018.

“We do not have evidence the actors succeeded in fielding an operational device, but they did test-fire a guided rocket,” the AI company said.
The Israeli president released his New Year’s greeting to Jewish communities around the world in eight languages.
“It’s an hour of crisis,” Deborah Lipstadt, former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, told JNS. “I think it’s a time when you have to try every avenue.”
“Attorney Pomeranz acted knowingly to bring about my arrest, my prosecution, and even my imprisonment ... for reporting for service the day after the Oct. 7 massacre,” soldier A. said.