President Donald Trump has a recommendation on his desk for pardoning the late legendary boxer, Muhammad Ali, and he said he’s seriously considering it.
Muhammad Ali was sentenced for draft evasion in 1967 to five years in prison, a $10,000 fine, and a 3-year ban from boxing. He was also stripped of his 1964 heavyweight title. However, he appealed his case and never went to prison. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1971, concluding that his religious objection to military service was valid.
Since Ali’s conviction has been overturned, Trump’s pardon would be a symbolic gesture.
Ali is considered one of the greatest boxers of all time. He won three heavyweight titles and, in 1960, one gold Olympic medal. Later in life, he suffered from Parkinson’s disease. In 2005, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor, by then-President George W. Bush.
He died on June 3, 2016, in Phoenix, Arizona. He was married four times and had nine children.
Trump said his Pardon Attorney is already preparing the recommendation for Ali’s clemency. The recommendation will be then submitted to the President.
Trump said he has a list of 3,000 people who are being considered for clemency.
“We are looking at literally thousands of names of people that have come to our attention that have been treated unfairly or where their sentence is far too long,” he said.
Ali would be the second boxer to get the rare posthumous pardon from Trump, who recently issued one to boxing legend Jack Johnson.
Johnson’s early 20th-century career was destroyed after he was prosecuted and imprisoned on racially motivated charges.
Boxers, historians, academics, and politicians had pushed for a pardon for Johnson for 14 years. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama never acted on the requests. Trump revealed in April that he was considering a full pardon after hearing about it from actor Sylvester Stallone.
D’Souza’s campaign contributions were scrutinized by the FBI after he released a documentary in 2012 that dug into the past and motivations of then-President Obama.
Trump also commuted the sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, who was sentenced to 27 years for money laundering after he lied to banks about the prosperity of his meat packing company to get more credit. Trump set him free on the last day of Hanukah on Dec. 20, 2017, after he had served eight years.
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