President Joe Biden has come under fire after commuting the sentence of a Chinese national convicted of possessing child pornography as part of a rare prisoner swap between the United States and China.
This decision coincided with the White House’s announcement of the “largest single-day grant of clemency in American history,” further intensifying public and political scrutiny.
The clemency was granted to Jin Shanlin, who had been convicted in 2021 of possessing 47,000 files of child sexual abuse material, including videos involving infants and toddlers.
Shanlin was sentenced to 97 months in prison and five years of supervised release. His release was part of a prisoner exchange involving two Chinese nationals convicted of espionage.
The prisoner swap saw Shanlin and the two convicted spies, Xu Yanjun and Ji Chaoqun, returned to China. Xu and Ji were convicted of attempting to gather sensitive defense technology for China’s government.
Ji had been sentenced to eight years in prison, with Xu serving as a co-conspirator in the espionage activities.
During Shanlin’s trial, an FBI agent testified that his family had ties to influential members of the Chinese Communist Party. This revelation, coupled with the gravity of his crime, has