Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Federal authorities on Thursday announced charges in a drug-and-gun-trafficking ring operating in Philadelphia and Luzerne Counties, with one of the defendants identified as a Philadelphia man who received a commutation from former President Joe Biden<\/a> for a prior prison sentence.<\/p>\n Michael Rinaldi, 49, and Jason Lozada, 51, both of Philadelphia, were among eight people indicted by a grand jury, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Philadelphia Field Division said in a news release Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n Prosecutors allege that the eight people conspired to distribute methamphetamine from August 2025 through September 2026, and also distributed fentanyl in addition to trafficking guns.<\/p>\n Philadelphia ATF and the United States Attorney\u2019s Office in the Middle District of Pennsylvania<\/a>, citing public records, noted that Rinaldi received an executive grant of clemency from Biden on Jan. 17, 2025<\/a>, commuting the remaining sentence from a prior drug-trafficking conviction.<\/p>\n In the days before Biden left office<\/a>, he granted clemency to nearly 2,500 individuals for what was described as non-violent drug offenses, and Rinaldi was one of the recipients.<\/p>\n Since taking office in January 2025, President Donald Trump<\/a> has granted clemency to more than 1,700 people<\/a>, including the roughly 1,500 people convicted for their involvement or who had charges pending for their alleged involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Federal authorities on Thursday announced charges in a drug-and-gun-trafficking ring operating in Philadelphia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[121575,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-293445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-michael-rinaldi-alleged-guns-and-drugs-ring-philadelphia-joe-biden-commutation","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}