In an interview on Rickey Smiley on the Spot, Boosie Badazz spoke extensively about paying $600,000 as part of his failed lobbying efforts to get a pardon from Donald Trump for his federal conviction on a firearm charge.
“What happened was, some government lobbyists… they came to me like, ‘We can get a pardon,’” he said around the 37-minute mark of the interview, as seen above. “‘We can get in there and get a pardon from Trump.’ … First I wasn’t going to entertain it, but I was under pressure. The federal judge had just dropped my case; three weeks later they charged me again… They added a charge and said I was an addict around a gun.”
He said the addict charge was bogus, and he was previously sentenced to prison for ten years for a marijuana charge. “I was never even given rehab,” he continued. “The system been letting me down… So now I got to get this over with and take a plea. So now I got three months until I’m sentenced in federal court, and I’m facing five-to-ten… I wasn’t going to trial to fight the charge, ‘cause at that time I did arm myself. … I armed myself for 30 minutes.”
In 2023, Boosie was in San Diego for a concert when he was seen on an Instagram Live stream with a gun tucked in his waistband. He was arrested on four firearm-related charges, but ultimately only faced one charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The case was later dismissed, but he faced the charge again when it was refiled, and he was additionally charged with possessing a firearm while being addicted to drugs. He made multiple pleas for a pardon, then pleaded guilty to the felon in possession of a firearm charge, and faced a maximum of 15 years in prison.
Boosie hired lobby firm JM Burkman & Associates in an effort to get his pardon last year, paying the firm $600,000 in an agreement he said would guarantee a refund of $300,000 if he didn’t get the pardon by January 31, 2026. The contract that he signed with the firm, which they said he never signed, is full of mistakes. It claimed that Boosie pleaded guilty the first time he was charged, not the second, for example. The firm also has a reputation of being “far-right operatives,” and its founders, Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, were convicted of running robocall scams in the 2020 election to suppress the Black vote.
When he was approached by the firm, he concluded that they “were shaky,” but it was evident that they ran in the same circles as people who could get the pardon request in front of Trump.
“If they didn’t have my pardon by January 31st, they had to send me my money back,” he said. “Keep 300,000, and you send me 300,000 back.” Around this time, he was given a relatively light sentence for the charge of three years of mandatory probation. If he knew he was only going to get probation, he said he would have never even entertained the firm’s proposition to lobby for a pardon.
“The worst part about it… Three days before Christmas, they text my lawyer and say the pardon has been signed by Donald Trump, got me running through the house with my shirt off,” he shared. “We just waiting on the news. I’m by the news for five days. I ain’t see shit, all I see is Trump bombing people… So when the deadline came, I told them, ‘Man, return my money, or I’mma sue you, bro.’”
He was told they would send the money back to him, but they insisted that they could still get the pardon. When they failed to meet the deadline again, he filed the lawsuit against the firm. “This is a Ponzi scheme,” he insisted, noting that he publicly reached out to some of the people the firm allegedly contacted as part of the pardon efforts only to be told they had no affiliation with it. “They pissing me off.” He said when he told them about his plans to sue, they told him they would just file for bankruptcy.
Watch the full interview up top.
