WASHINGTON — “Tiger King” star Joe Exotic is hoping President Donald Trump will spring him from prison.
The legal team representing Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, is hand delivering a 257-page pardon application this week to the White House, according to multiple reports. Exotic is serving a 22-year prison sentence in Fort Worth, Texas, for his role in a murder-for-hire plot against Florida wildlife sanctuary owner Carole Baskin.
Exotic is including a handwritten letter to the president, in which he reportedly begs Trump to, “allow me to make you proud, to make America proud, to make the world proud. Be my hero please.”
The letter also reportedly includes the hashtag "#TrumpJr.2024."
Exotic’s lawyers argue that the Netflix star did not receive a fair trial.
Baskin and Exotic are bitter rivals. She tried to have his zoo shut down for allegedly abusing animals and selling tiger cubs. He accused her of killing her first husband, Don Lewis, who went missing in 1997. Baskin has denied being involved in Lewis’ disappearance.
In addition to being convicted of two counts of murder-for-hire in April 2019, Exotic was also found guilty of eight counts of violating the Lacey Act for falsifying wildlife records and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act for killing five tigers.
Exotic says he never tried to have Baskin killed. His lawyers say the threats their client made against Baskin were “hyperbole,” “showmanship” and jokes in poor taste.
The documents Exotic is submitting to the White House also include a letter to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, in which Exotic claims he has been “sexually assaulted by jail staff, beat up and tied in a chair to the point the skin came off my arms.” A spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons told People in a statement, "There was no such assault."
Exotic also says he fears he’ll die in prison because his health is compromised by medical issues such as common variable immune deficiency and anemia.
Trump was asked during a press conference in April whether he’d consider pardoning Exotic. The president said he didn’t know anything about the case but that he’d “take a look.”
Trump has a history of pardoning high-profile people, such as former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr., former NYPD police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, among others. He commuted the sentence for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a former “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant. And he granted clemency to Alice Marie Johnson, a woman who was serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense, at the urging of reality TV star Kim Kardashian West.