President-elect Donald Trump said he plans to order the Justice Department to expand its pursuit of capital punishment for violent criminals.
Trump posted Tuesday on Truth Social, to weigh in on the conservative backlash to President Joe Biden’s commutations of death row inmates by forecasting that he’ll take a much harsher approach.
Trump wrote that the moment he’s inaugurated, he’ll command DOJ “to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”
His comment came as part of a repost of an article about Biden’s Monday decision to commute the death sentences of 37 prisoners on death row. Biden chose to reduce the punishments to life in prison without parole for people who’d murdered fellow inmates or guards, among other violent crimes.
Under Biden, outgoing Attorney General Merrick Garland approved the federal death penalty much more sparingly than what Trump suggested is in store at DOJ in the new administration. Garland waited until January to make his first authorization of capital punishment in a new case—for the White gunman who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, N.Y. supermarket in 2022.
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