Holbert was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2018 after being convicted of crack cocaine distribution and multiple firearm offenses.
Thirty-one-year-old Khyre Holbert—a convicted felon whose 20-year crack cocaine and firearm-possession sentence was commuted by former President Joe Biden at the end of his term—was slapped with a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition charge following his alleged participation in a shooting in Omaha, Nebraska.
Holbert was arrested on October 4 after allegedly participating in the shooting, which resulted in a 28-year-old victim being transferred to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Given this is the complaint stage, additional charges could still be filed. Holbert could face a maximum of fifteen years in prison on the gun possession charges alone.
The criminal complaint against Holbert, obtained by National Review, states that his fingerprints were found on the gun that police believe was used in the shooting.
The new charge against Holbert comes amid renewed scrutiny of Biden’s controversial pardons and sentence commutations near the end of his term, as well as his extensive use of the autopen, which Congressional Republicans are now probing.
“The Biden Administration’s last-minute commutations were not only a cruel blow to victims’ families, but also a fundamental failure to hold criminals accountable,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement to National Review regarding the new complaint. “This tragic case proves that crime must be met with consequences, not weakness. Our prosecutors in Nebraska are doing the job that the prior administration refused to do.”
Holbert’s most recent arrest is just the latest in a long criminal history. On November 30, 2018, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Nebraska on crack distribution charges and multiple firearm charges. Following his commutation at the end of the Biden administration, Holbert was released from the Federal Bureau of Prisons custody in May 2025. He began three years of supervision with the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services Office, District of Nebraska, on May 30.
In 2010, he was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and possessing an unregistered firearm as a minor and was sentenced to a year in jail. The following year, he was hit with another concealed firearm possession charge and was sentenced to 24 months of probation. Then in 2012, Holbert was convicted of firearm felony possession and sentenced to three years in prison.
Holbert is known to be a member of a very active and violent gang in the Omaha area, law enforcement officials say. According to the criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska, Biden’s commutation of Holbert’s sentence followed serious “objections of the United States Attorney’s Office, District of Nebraska, due in part to his gang affiliation and substantial criminal history.”
According to Justice Department officials, “the gun used in the Omaha shooting was found to have been discharged in two other separate criminal incidents that occurred in Omaha, including a homicide that occurred on June 22, 2025, and a felony assault in which several unknown assailants shot at a man in his vehicle on June 23, 2025.”
The new charges against a controversial Biden commutation recipient add a new wrinkle to the continuing criticism of Biden’s end-of-term pardon and commutation process. As National Review reported in September, pardon-focused attorneys in Biden’s own Justice Department were left in the dark about the former president’s use of the autopen to issue controversial pardons and to commute the sentences of 37 death-row inmates and more than 2,000 drug offenders.
White House documents and email correspondence show that Biden and his top aides did not consult with death-row victims’ families before the former president verbally approved more than three dozen death-row inmates’ commutations. Under the Trump administration, Bondi has ordered that eight of the former death row inmates be transferred to the supermax prison ADX in Colorado. More transfers are expected, the Justice Department confirmed to National Review.
The death-row cases were certainly not the only instance in which there existed widespread confusion within the Justice Department about how the White House was vetting, approving, and characterizing clemency cases to the public. According to then–Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer, Biden issued commutations for many inmates convicted for violent drug-related offenses without first seeking or reviewing victim input.
“I think the language ‘offenses described to the Department of Justice’ in the warrant is highly problematic and in order to resolve its meaning appropriately, and consistent with the President’s intent, we will need a statement or direction from the President as to how to interpret the language,” Weinsheimer wrote in an email to administration officials on January 18, the details of which were confirmed by National Review.
A report released Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee confirmed that top Biden officials abused executive authority by using the autopen to sign off on orders without first receiving clear written approval from Biden himself.
“The Biden Autopen Presidency ranks among the greatest scandals in U.S. history. As President Biden declined, his staff abused the autopen and a lax chain-of-command policy to effect executive actions that lack any documentation of whether they were in fact authorized,” the report reads.
This story has been updated with new information.