President Trump last week commuted the lengthy fraud sentence of a former business associate of Hunter Biden’s who assisted a Republican investigation into the Biden family.
Jason Galanis was sentenced in 2020 to 189 months in prison and ordered to pay nearly $162 million in forfeiture and restitution after pleading guilty to his role in two securities fraud schemes. One of the schemes, which defrauded investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars, involved a company for which Mr. Biden was listed as the vice chairman, according to documents introduced at trial.
The commutation is the latest example of Mr. Trump’s aggressive use of his clemency power to reward allies or highlight his own grievances about what he sees as the political weaponization of the justice system.
Last year, Mr. Galanis testified from a federal prison in Alabama before two Republican-controlled House committees investigating Mr. Biden’s foreign business dealings and their intersection with the vice presidency of his father, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“The entire value add of Hunter Biden to our business was his family name and his access to his father,” Mr. Galanis said in a prepared statement.
The investigation did not result in the impeachment of President Biden, as some Republicans had hoped. But it was cheered by Mr. Trump’s allies.
Representative Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who helped lead the investigation as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, recommended Mr. Galanis for clemency to the White House, according to a person familiar with the events.
A senior White House official pointed to Mr. Galanis’s contribution to the investigation to explain the commutation. The official also noted that Mr. Galanis had already spent years in prison, and said the White House had assessed that he had a low risk of recidivism.
Mr. Galanis’s commutation, which also eliminated his unpaid financial obligations, was posted on the website of the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney on Monday. It was not announced publicly by the White House.
The commutation came three days after Mr. Trump publicly announced a full and unconditional pardon to Devon Archer, another business partner of Hunter Biden and Mr. Galanis. Mr. Archer earned fans on the right by speaking out publicly about the overlap between the younger Mr. Biden’s business and the elder Mr. Biden’s public service.
Mr. Archer had also been found guilty in the Native American scheme, though the trial court judge had set aside the jury verdict, only to be reversed in 2020 by a federal appeals court ruling that reinstated the fraud conviction.
Mr. Biden was not charged in the case, and his lawyers have said he was not involved.
The judge in the case called Mr. Galanis “the admitted mastermind of the conspiracy and a serial fraudster.”
Lawyers who represented Mr. Galanis in the fraud cases did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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