Former Hip-Hop Producer Weldon Angelos Receives Pardon From Trump

Former producer and Snoop Dogg collaborator Weldon Angelos received a pardon from President Donald Trump after being sentenced to 55-years in prison.

Angelos was initially arrested for selling $350 worth of weed to an undercover officer with a concealed firearm and was sentenced to 55 years in prison without parole in 2004. He was among the 15 people that Trump also pardoned this past Tuesday. Angelos took to Instagram to share how glad he was to be newly freed.

"Feels great to have been fully pardoned by the President of the United States," he wrote in the caption. "Now it’s time for more pardons and commutations."

He also shared the official document proving that Trump had pardoned him.

Angelos was the executive producer of Snoop Dogg's We From the LBC Soundtrack that dropped back in 2002. Around that same time, he was a target of a sting operation when law enforcement was attempting to crack down on him and other figures in hip-hop and bust them for drugs/firearm possession. The police would later search Angelos home and find more weapons. After reportedly turning down a 15-year plea deal, he was eventually convicted of 13 charges, including drug, firearm, and money laundering charges. Mandatory sentencing landed him a 55-year bid in prison before he was pardoned.

“The sentence was unjust, uncruel, and even irrational...because his appeals have been exhausted, the only solution for Angelos is a Presidential commutation," Judge Paul Cassell, who oversaw the case, wrote to President Obama in 2016 to commute the harsh sentence. "I urge you to swiftly commute his sentence.”

President Obama eventually would and commuted Angelos' sentence the same year, when he was then released.