Gregory Korte

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration instructed Justice Department attorneys to neglect applications for presidential pardons to give priority to the Justice Department's initiative to release low-level offenders from prison, the former pardon attorney said in her resignation letter early this year.

That inaction was one of several issues that former Pardon Attorney Deborah Leff cited in her letter, which was obtained by USA TODAY after making a Freedom of Information Act request. Leff resigned in January after less than two years as the official responsible for making clemency recommendations for the president.

Her resignation letter suggests a broken and bureaucratic process at odds with President Obama's own aim to exercise his pardon power "more aggressively" in the final months of his presidency. Leff wrote that the administration's focus on the clemency initiative at the expense of traditional pardons and commutations "means that the requests of thousands of petitioners seeking justice will lie unheard."

"This is inconsistent with the mission and values to which I have dedicated my life, and inconsistent with what I believe the department should represent," she wrote.

U.S. pardon attorney to resign amid Obama's last-year clemency push

It's the job of the U.S. pardon attorney to investigate all of those cases and make a recommendation to the deputy attorney general, who then forwards it to the White House Counsel's Office and, ultimately, the president. Because the pardon attorney advises the president on sensitive cases, the process is cloaked in secrecy, and officials rarely discuss the process publicly. So Leff's letter offers a rare glimpse into how the pardon office works in the Obama administration.

Unlike in previous administrations, where pardon office staffers and the White House had routine conversations, Leff said she was denied "all access to the White House Counsel's Office," which is the last step for a pardon application before being approved or denied by the president.

She said Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates had overruled her recommendations in an increasing number of cases — and that in those cases, the president was unaware of the difference of opinion. "I believe that prior to making the serious and complex decisions underlying clemency, it is important for the president to have a full set of views," she said.

And she said the Justice Department had not made good on its promise to put the required resources behind the clemency initiative. That initiative, part of a broader push for sentencing reform, was designed to use the president's constitutional pardon power to release federal inmates who would have received shorter sentences had they been sentenced under today's more lenient guidelines. It applies mostly to non-violent drug offenders serving sentences of 10 years or more, with good behavior while in prison.

Since the administration announced the initiative in 2014, applications for clemency have exploded. There are now 10,073 clemency cases pending — three times as many as in 2013. And that doesn't count thousands more cases seeking free legal help through the Clemency Project, an outside consortium set up to assist with the initiative.

When he announced the initiative in April 2014, then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole said the department had "pledged to provide the necessary resources to fulfill this goal expeditiously." While the administration didn't set a target for the number of cases, former Attorney General Eric Holder told the Washington Post last year that he had hoped that as many as 10,000 people could have their sentences reduced under the program. So far, Obama has granted less than 2% of those.

Obama administration clemency push gets slow start

In modern times, presidential clemency usually takes one of two forms: pardons, which constitute a full forgiveness for a crime and restore civil rights like voting and gun ownership, and commutations, which shorten prison sentences and usually have conditions attached.

In the most recent round of clemency actions announced in December, Obama granted 95 commutations but only two pardons. And with 10 months to go in his presidency, Obama has granted just 70 pardons — fewer than any full-term president since John Adams, according to political scientist P.S. Ruckman Jr. He's been more generous with his 187 commutations, more than any president since Lyndon Johnson.

Leff's resignation letter was addressed to Yates, whom the Justice Department declined to make available for an interview. Instead, the department issued a written statement that said it was working with Congress to increase the budget for the Office of Pardon Attorney. The department has already posted job openings for 16 attorneys to process clemency petitions in hopes that Congress will approve the funding.

"The department is using its resources to recommend commutations of low-level offenders who are currently serving sentences received under outdated drug laws and do not pose a public safety risk if granted a commutation, as well as continuing to vet pardons and other commutations," said spokeswoman Dena Iverson.

Leff declined to comment on her resignation. But she also made clear in her letter that she agrees with the stated aims of Obama's clemency policy, even as she questioned the administration's commitment to it.

"I fully support and admire the administration's groundbreaking and much-needed launch of the clemency initiative and the possibility of justice it brings to so many deserving people," she wrote. "But given that the department has not fulfilled its commitment to provide the resources necessary for my office to make timely and thoughtful recommendations on clemency to the president, given your statement that the needed staff will not be forthcoming, and given that I have been instructed to set aside thousands of petitions for pardon and traditional commutation, I cannot fulfill my responsibilities as pardon attorney."

​She also said she hoped that the Justice Department would make good on promises to allow her successor more access to the White House — especially on cases overruled by the deputy attorney general — "for the integrity of the decision-making process."

In February, the Justice Department named Robert Zausmer, a career prosecutor, as pardon attorney. The senior career-level job usually continues from one administration to the next.

The White House said Obama remains "deeply committed to the clemency initiative and continues to believe that clemency is an important way to spotlight, and remedy, injustices in our criminal justice system."

"He is grateful for the work of the dedicated public servants at the Department of Justice in support of this important priority, including individuals in the Office of the Pardon Attorney and the Deputy Attorney General," Assistant White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement.

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