Yes, Biden Commuted Sentences of Chinese Spies and Sex Offender. Here’s What Else We Found

Claim:

U.S. President Joe Biden pardoned two Chinese spies and the relative of a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party caught with tens of thousands of images of child pornography on his computer.

Rating:

Context

Biden commuted, not pardoned, the sentences of three Chinese nationals as part of a prisoner swap that repatriated three Americans. These commutations were unrelated to executive clemency actions Biden described as including “non-violent” offenders.

In the final month of U.S. President Joe Biden’s presidency in 2024, he commuted or pardoned over 1,000 people, including his son Hunter Biden.

On Dec. 18, 2024, several media outlets including the New York Post asserted that, “President Biden pardoned two Chinese spies and the relative of a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party who was caught with tens of thousands of images of child pornography on his computer.”

While Biden did not “pardon” them, it is true that he commuted the sentences of three Chinese nationals: one convicted on child pornography charges and two convicted of espionage-related charges.

As described by the Executive Office of Pardons and Clemency, a pardon “is an expression of the President’s forgiveness and ordinarily is granted in recognition of the applicant’s acceptance of responsibility for the crime and established good conduct.” A commutation reduces or removes a criminal sentence, but does not “change the fact of conviction” or “imply innocence.” Both actions are forms of what is known as executive clemency.

Biden issued three commutations to Chinese nationals as part of a prisoner swap carried out in November that repatriated three detained Americans. As reported by BBC News on Nov. 27, 2024:

Three Americans detained in China were released in exchange for three Chinese prisoners in the US, after the Biden administration negotiated a prisoner swap.

Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and John Leung are on their way back to the US, a spokesperson for the National Security Council (NSC) said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Soon they will return and be reunited with their families for the first time in many years,” the statement said. The exchange was reportedly months in the making, and included the release of three Chinese citizens in US custody, Chinese authorities confirmed on Wednesday.

The U.S. State Department considered the imprisonment of two of the Americans, Swidan and Li, as wrongful detentions. Leung, NBC News reported, had been “sentenced to life in prison last year after being found guilty of espionage by a court in eastern China.”

Early reporting on the swap identified two of the three Chinese nationals as Xu Yanjun and Ji Chaoqun, who had both been convicted of espionage-related crimes by the U.S. government. The Financial Times then reported that the third individual was Jin Shanlin, who had been convicted of “activities relating to material constituting or containing child pornography.”

Some reporting has suggested that familial connections to the Chinese Communist Party could have played a role in freeing Jin. As reported by the Financial Times on Nov. 28, 2024:

Jin pleaded guilty in 2021 to possessing child pornography. During his trial in Texas, an FBI special agent testified that his family was “connected to influential members of the Communist party in China”, according to court records.

As part of this prisoner swap, Biden commuted the sentences of the Chinese nationals. The clemency documents for all three individuals stipulate, among other things, that they “shall remain outside the limits of the United States, its territories, and its possessions.”

Some conservative commentators, including Benny Johnson, conflated the above acts of clemency with a Dec. 12, 2024 announcement that the White House had given clemency to over 1,500 individuals, including the pardons of “39 individuals convicted of non-violent crimes”:

Biden neither pardoned nor described the actions of any of the Chinese citizens involved in the November prisoner swap as “non-violent.”

Because Biden did commute the sentences of two Chinese citizens convicted of espionage and one convicted of child pornography charges, however, we rate the claim as mostly true.

Sources