OAN Staff Jacob Miller
8:16 AM – Friday, January 17, 2024
According to his lawyers, Donald Trump needs to pardon Joe Maldonado, better known as Joe Exotic, who was featured in the hit pandemic-era Netflix show “Tiger King.”
During a press conference on Thursday, Maldonado’s lawyers maintained that he did not hire anybody to kill anyone. They added that Netflix took the ‘murder-for-hire’ angle because it was more interesting than making a regular documentary.
In 2019, Maldonado was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison on two counts of attempted murder for hire for the plot to kill Carole Baskin. In 2021, his sentence was shortened to 21 years behind bars.
Baskin, who was also featured in “Tiger King,” had a complicated rivalry and long-running feud with Maldonado that began in 2009.
Maldonado has denied the allegations that he hired a hitman to kill Baskin.
His team says all Trump needs to do is look at the facts.
“The timing of this today is important because Joe wants President Trump, that has spoken about this in the past, to once again hear these facts and bring his plight to the public eye,” his attorney Levi G. McCathern said.
“We ask very directly to President Trump, and I ask you listening in the court of public opinion, free Joe Exotic. He does not need to be in prison,” McCathern continued. “This is not a man that deserves to be there. He did not do what he’s convicted of doing. He asked for a new trial, he wasn’t granted one. At a, at a minimum, you should be entitled to that. Look at the evidence yourself, make up your own mind.”
Maldonado petitioned for a pardon during Trump’s first term. His lawyers hope Trump is more sympathetic this time around.
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