The first was former Pennsylvania Judge Michael Conahan, who “was convicted in 2011 in what was infamously called the ‘kids-for-cash’ scandal, where he took kickbacks from for-profit detention centers in exchange for wrongly sending juveniles to their facilities. The case was widely considered to be one of the worst judicial scandals in Pennsylvania history … The misconduct of Conahan and another Luzerne County judge led the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to throw out 4,000 juvenile convictions, and the discredited state judges were ordered to pay $200 million to the victims.”
The other case involved former Dixon, Illinois, comptroller Rita Crundwell.
“She pleaded guilty in 2012 to a $54 million embezzlement scheme, which was believed to be the largest municipal fraud in US history. She was sentenced to almost 20 years in prison, nearly the maximum, though she moved to house arrest during the pandemic.”
Biden pardoned two high-ranking Chinese spies and a relative of a top CCP official who was convicted on child pornography charges as part of a prisoner swap with China.
The individuals pardoned were identified as Yanjun Xu and Ji Chaoqun, both convicted of espionage, and Shanlin Jin, convicted of possessing over 47,000 images of child pornography while a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 2021, according to the Post.
In exchange, multiple media outlets reported in late November that the U.S. secured the release of Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and John Leung. Their release was the result of years of negotiations between White House and State Department officials and their Chinese counterparts, according to administration officials. The New York Times, Politico, and the BBC confirmed that the release of the three Americans was part of a hostage deal.
