Reveling in his pardon powers, President Donald Trump said Friday he's thinking "very seriously" about pardoning former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, whose conviction was already overturned by the Supreme Court in 1971.
It's one of "thousands" of cases the president's team is reviewing, he told reporters as he left the White House en route to a world leaders' summit in Canada. And Trump said he's thinking about soliciting recommendations about other cases to consider from pro football players and other athletes who have protested racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem — a tactic Trump has fiercely denounced.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before leaving the White House in Washington, Friday, June 8, 2018, to attend the G7 Summit in Charlevoix, Quebec, Canada. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Trump said that, "instead of talk," he's "going to ask all of those people to recommend to me — because that's what they're protesting — people that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system."
"I'm going to ask them to recommend to me people that were unfairly treated, friends of theirs or people that they know about and I'm going to take a look at those applications," he said.
Trump has been on a clemency kick of late, using his near-limitless power to pardon a growing list that includes a former White House aide, a conservative commentator and a former sheriff convicted of violating a judge's orders who campaigned with Trump in 2016.
Earlier this week, he commuted the life sentence of a woman whose cause was championed by reality television star Kim Kardashian West. Last month he granted a posthumous pardon to boxing's first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson. Actor Sylvester Stallone alerted him to that case.
Trump told reporters Friday his team is now "looking at literally thousands" of people who have come to their attention because they've been treated unfairly or their sentences are too long.
"We have 3,000 names. We're looking at them," Trump said, calling the power to pardon "a beautiful thing."
Among them is Ali, who died in 2016.
FILE - In this Nov. 2009 file photo, President Bush presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to boxer Muhammad Ali in the East Room of the White House. President Donald Trump said he is thinking "very seriously" about pardoning Muhammad Ali, even though the Supreme Court vacated the boxing champion's conviction in 1971. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Born Cassius Clay, Ali changed his name after converting to Islam in the 1960s. He refused to serve in the Vietnam War because of his religious beliefs, declaring himself a conscientious objector. He was stripped of his heavyweight crown in 1967, but his legal fight ended in 1971 when the Supreme Court ruled in his favor and overturned his conviction. He regained the boxing title in 1974.
"I'm thinking about somebody that you all know very well. And he went through a lot. And he wasn't very popular then," Trump said. "He certainly, his memory is very popular now."
Ron Tweel, Ali's lawyer, pointed out that Ali has no criminal record.
"We appreciate President Trump's sentiment, but a pardon is unnecessary," he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to questions about why the president feels one is needed.
Trump said last week also said he's considering commuting the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is serving 14 years in prison for corruption, and pardoning celebrity lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, who served about five months on charges connected to an insider trading case. O.J. Simpson, he said in response to a reporter's question, is not on his list.
The president has been operating outside the usual Justice Department clemency protocol, in which submitted cases are carefully considered based on their merits, and recommendations made. Instead, White House officials say, Trump has focused on individual cases that have caught his attention or been brought to him by friends or celebrities. He's been especially drawn to cases in which he feels a person's prosecution has been politically motivated — a situation that may remind him of his own predicament at the center of the special counsel investigation into Russian election meddling.
Trump insisted Friday that he was also interested in clemency for regular people and those without high-profile backers.
He said that, "it's easier and people find it fascinating" to see him pardon the famous, but that he "would get more thrill out of pardoning people that nobody knows."
Yet Trump's suggestion that professional athletes help him identify cases only seemed to fuel concerns that those without star advocates will be ignored.
"Well, you know, if you think about it, that's really -- that becomes celebrity advocates. But they know a lot of things that we're not going to know. They've seen a lot of abuse and they've seen a lot of unfairness," he said.
The idea also sparked backlash from the American Civil Liberties Union.
"President Trump has spent much of his first 18 months in office degrading NFL players who protest police brutality and racial injustice. Today, he has tried once again to change the narrative about the work of those and other activists, betraying a fundamental misunderstanding of the cause behind these protests — and using racist dog whistles to do it," said Jeff Robinson, the group's deputy legal director.
The players have been protesting racial injustice and the high numbers of African Americans killed by police.
ATLANTA (AP) — As Donald Trump seeks a return to the White House, criminal charges are piling up for the people who tried to help him stay there in 2020 by promoting false theories of voter fraud.
At least five states won in 2020 by President Joe Biden have investigated efforts to install slates of electors who would cast Electoral College votes for Trump despite his loss. Those slates were to be used by Trump allies in the House and Senate to justify delaying or blocking the certification of the election during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, which was disrupted by pro-Trump rioters storming the Capitol.
Several of those charged or accused of involvement in election interference across the states are still involved in Republican politics today — including the lawyer overseeing “election integrity” for the Republican National Committee. And Trump, who faces federal charges in Washington and state charges in Georgia for his efforts to overturn Biden's win, frequently still claims the 2020 election was stolen, a falsehood echoed by many of his supporters.
Here's a look at the sprawling web of allegations, criminal charges and references to people in Trump’s orbit as unindicted co-conspirators.
The former president faces state charges in Georgia and federal charges in Washington over efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and has been identified as an unindicted co-conspirator by investigators in Arizona and Michigan.
The Georgia charges came in a sprawling racketeering indictment in Fulton County in August that accused Trump and 18 others of participating in a wide-ranging scheme — that included the Republican elector effort — to illegally try to overturn his narrow loss in the state.
Trump is the only one charged in the federal indictment in Washington, but several close associates are recognizable as unindicted co-conspirators.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing his arguments that he should be immune from prosecution. He has clinched his third straight Republican nomination for president.
Racketeering and conspiracy are among the charges the former New York mayor and Trump-aligned attorney faces in Georgia. In Arizona, the charges against him have not yet been made public.
In Michigan, a state investigator has testified that Giuliani is among several high-profile unindicted co-conspirators in a case against Republicans who signed elector certificates falsely saying Trump had won the state.
He's also an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal indictment in Washington, which cites comments he made at the “Stop the Steal” rally prior to the Capitol riot.
His spokesman, Ted Goodman, said in a statement Thursday that the “continued weaponization of our justice system should concern every American as it does permanent, irrevocable harm to the country.”
Bobb is a lawyer and conservative media personality charged in Arizona. She worked closely with Giuliani as he tried to persuade Arizona lawmakers to block the certification of the election results. She later raised money for a discredited audit of the election results in Maricopa County and covered the spectacle for One America News Network.
As lawyer for Trump, Bobb signed a letter stating that a “diligent search” for classified records had been conducted and that all such documents had been given back to the government before an FBI search revealed dozens of protected documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
She was recently tapped to oversee “election integrity” efforts at the Republican National Committee.
Asked about Bobb's role with the RNC, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung accused Democrats of “weaponization of the legal system.”
A longtime Trump aide, Epshteyn was charged in Arizona, where a grand jury accused him of assisting with the fake electors plan.
He's a lawyer who has been by Trump's side for some of the former president's own court appearances, including Thursday in New York.
Epshteyn was a principal surrogate in the 2016 presidential campaign, making frequent television appearances. He briefly served as a senior White House adviser before becoming an analyst for Sinclair Broadcast Group.
Trump's White House chief is charged in the sweeping Georgia racketeering indictment, but not in connection with the Republican elector meeting. Among other things, he participated in a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during which the then-president urged the elections official to help “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss in the state.
Meadows' charges in Arizona are not publicly known. He was also identified by the Michigan state investigator as an unindicted co-conspirator.
His attorney, George Terwilliger, referred to Wednesday's indictment in Arizona as a “blatantly political and politicized accusation and will be contested and defeated.”
Meadows now works for the Conservative Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that describes his role as leading “strategic initiatives on Capitol Hill, with other partner organizations, and with grassroots activists across the country.”
A former dean of Chapman University’s law school in Southern California, Eastman wrote a memo arguing that Trump could remain in power if then-Vice President Mike Pence overturned the results of the electoral certification during a joint session of Congress using the slates of Republican electors from the battleground states.
The charges against him in Georgia include racketeering and conspiracy, while the Arizona charges have not been made public. He's also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal indictment, which quotes his remarks at the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Georgia and his lawyer Charles Burnham said he's innocent of the charges in Arizona.
Ellis was charged in the Georgia indictment after she appeared with Giuliani at a December 2020 hearing hosted by state Republican lawmakers at the Georgia Capitol during which false allegations of election fraud were made. She pleaded guilty in October to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings after reaching a deal with prosecutors. She wasn't charged in connection with the Republican electors efforts in Georgia.
It wasn't immediately clear whether she had a lawyer in Arizona who could comment on charges she faces there, which have not yet been made public.
A Trump campaign staffer and onetime White House aide, Roman was charged with several conspiracy counts related to the Republican elector meeting and the filing of the elector certificate in Georgia. He was also charged in Arizona.
Roman has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Georgia. It wasn't immediately clear whether he had a lawyer in Arizona yet.
Chesebro, a lawyer, worked with Republicans in multiple swing states to coordinate and execute the Trump elector plan. He was charged with racketeering and several conspiracy counts in relation to that work in Georgia and in October reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to one felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.
Chesebro is an unindicted co-conspirator in Trump's federal election indictment, which says he "assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.”
He was also named in the Wisconsin civil lawsuit, and when he turned over documents to settle that suit he didn't admit liability but promised never to participate in similar efforts.
A lawyer and unflinching Trump ally, Powell was charged with racketeering and conspiracy charges in Georgia but was not implicated in the elector scheme. The Fulton County indictment accused her of participating in an unauthorized breach of elections equipment in a rural Georgia county elections office. She pleaded guilty in October to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties after reaching a deal with prosecutors.
She's an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal election interference case, where prosecutors say she filed a lawsuit in Georgia that amplified false or unsupported claims of election fraud.
Clark was a U.S. Justice Department official who championed Trump’s false claims of election fraud. He was charged in Georgia with racketeering and criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings after he presented colleagues with a draft letter pushing Georgia officials to convene a special legislative session on the election results.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Georgia.
He was also one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the federal election indictment against Trump.
In addition to Arizona, criminal charges have been filed against Republicans who presented themselves as electors in Michigan, Georgia and Nevada. Wisconsin Republicans who signed elector certificates reached a settlement in a civil lawsuit, admitting their actions were part of an effort to overturn Biden’s victory. No charges have been filed in Pennsylvania or New Mexico, with the attorney general in the latter saying there’s no avenue for prosecution under state law.
Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.
FILE - Mark Meadows speaks with reporters at the White House, Oct. 21, 2020, in Washington. Meadows, chief of staff for former President Donald Trump, was among those indicted Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in an Arizona election interference case. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
FILE - Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani speaks during a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Washington, Dec. 15, 2023. Guiliani, a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, was among those indicted Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in an Arizona election interference case.(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Former President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media at Manhattan criminal court in New York, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)
