Will Donald Trump pardon Joe Exotic? Here's why 'Tiger King' star spent $10,000 in Trump International Hotel
Joe Exotic and his team of lawyers have been running a campaign to get President Donald Trump to pardon the 'Tiger King' star. According to his lawyer, Eric Love, Exotic’s legal team has been communicating with the officials in Washington DC in connection with arranging a pardon from Trump. Exotic's legal team, that has been chasing Trump, since, April 2010. The team even paid a whopping bill amount, in order to grab Trump's attention.
Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as "Joe Exotic", is a tiger breeder who described himself as "gay, gun-toting cowboy with a mullet". He got convicted in 2019, on two murder counts of "murder-for-hire" for plotting to kill his rival, Big Cat Rescue owner Carole Baskin, as well as eight counts of violating the Lacey Act for falsifying wildlife records and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act. On January 22, 2019, he got sentenced to 22 years in prison.
According to an anonymous organizer, Exotic’s team had spent around $10,000 during a visit to the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Earlier, this month, Republican Florida congressman Matt Gaetz arrived on a Fox News show and stated that Trump should release Exotic before he leaves office in January, 2021.
The case also grabbed thousands of eyes, when Netflix released 'Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness', an eight-episode mini-docuseries, which premiered from March 20, 2020, to April 12, 2020. The series reveals the true story of a man's journey from an attention-seeking zoo owner to a convicted criminal.
According to a news report by ABC, as the White House aides come to terms with the election results and have turned their focus on the remaining weeks of President Trump's administration, various experts told ABC News that various Trump allies and other lawyers have started a campaign to petition the West Wing in hopes of securing pardons for those who might receive a sympathetic reception from the president and Exotic's case is one of them.
"We are waiting on the pen to hit the paper, we think we are very, very close," Eric Love, an attorney for Joseph Maldano-Passage, aka Tiger King Joe Exotic, said.