Will Eric Holder's Push for Drug Amnesty Continue Under Next Attorney General?

In a parting shot at outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, published in Organization Trends, I focus on an aspect of Holder's tenure that gotten less attention, the drug amnesty movement. The issue is something for senators to consider in the confirmation hearing for Loretta Lynch. Please read full article here.

Here's an excerpt:

In a video message earlier this year, Holder talked about the Clemency Project, which is the Obama administration’s initiative aimed at freeing as many as 20,000 drug offenders. “In 2010, President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act reducing unfair disparities in sentences imposed on people for offenses involving different forms of cocaine,” Holder said. “But there’s still too many people in federal prison who were sentenced under the old regime and who, as a result, will have to spend far more time in prison than they would if sentenced today for exactly the same crime,” he said. “This is simply not right."

The Fair Sentencing Act changed the quantity of crack cocaine and powder cocaine needed to trigger mandatory minimum sentencing laws. The statute eliminated five-year sentences for crack cocaine and reversed many of the provisions of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act.

The Obama administration was going to use executive action to make a 2010 law passed by Congress retroactively cover sentences handed down by courts prior to the change in the law. For an administration that’s had jolly fun circumventing the legislative branch, this new initiative gave Obama and Holder a means of doing an extra-constitutional end-run around the federal judiciary.
The administration is receiving help from private groups, both large and small, that are united in a push for the relaxation of narcotics laws. Leading the way in recruiting prisoners to seek early clemency through the president’s mass pardon program are the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU Foundation Inc., 2013 assets $341.1 million; ACLU Inc., 2013 assets $34.7 million), National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (2012 assets $6.8 million), American Bar Association (2013 assets $298.1 million), and Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM Foundation, 2012 assets $1.2 million).

No one who follows the activist Left should be surprised to learn that radical philanthropist George Soros funds some of these advocacy organizations. Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society has provided grants to ACLU Foundation ($3,192,000 since 2009) and FAMM Foundation ($1.2 million since 2009). His Open Society Institute (recently renamed Open Society Foundations) has given grants to ACLU Foundation ($24,912,175 since 1999) and FAMM Foundation ($1,771,000 since 1999). The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has received $20,800 from the Soros-funded Tides Foundation.