Boosie Badazz reportedly paid $600,000 to a pair of lobbyists to seek a pardon from President Donald Trump — and now he’s taking legal action to demand a refund after such an edict never materialized.
According to a report by the news outlet NOTUS, attorneys for Boosie (Torence Hatch) have filed an arbitration case against Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman and their firm JM Burkman & Associates over the failed pardon effort, which came as the rapper was facing sentencing on gun possession charges.
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The operatives pitched Boosie by “talking like they had Trump on speed dial,” the rapper told NOTUS, and later “made it seem like a done deal.” But clemency never came, and a White House official told the outlet the clemency office had “never heard from Wohl or Burkman.”
The rapper’s legal action, filed in March, demands the return of $300,000, the report says, citing a provision in his retainer contract with the lobbyists that required the return of half the payment if a pardon wasn’t secured. Wohl and Burkman say that deal was never actually signed and want the case dismissed, according to legal documents released by NOTUS.
JM Burkman & Associates and an attorney for Wohl and Burkman did not return requests for comment from Billboard. Multiple attorneys and a press rep for Boosie also did not return requests for comment.
Boosie was charged in 2023 with illegally possessing a firearm, which is a crime for someone previously convicted of a felony. Following years of procedural ups and downs, the case against the Louisiana rapper was scheduled for a trial last summer. But in August, the rapper said he would accept a plea deal because he was “tired of fighting.”
As he headed to sentencing, Boosie hired Wohl and Burkman to help seek a pardon, according to NOTUS. He would hardly have been the first rapper to get one: NBA YoungBoy secured a Trump pardon in May 2025 on weapons and drug convictions, and Lil Wayne got a full pardon in Trump’s final days in office in 2021.
Though the pardon never came through, Boosie still avoided prison. At sentencing in January, a federal judge exercised leniency and ordered him to serve only three years of supervised release instead. “I’m blessed not to be in prison right now,” he said at the time.
But months later, he was back in trouble. In May, Boosie was hit with a felony assault charge in Houston over accusations that he had smashed a nightclub bouncer in the head with a glass hookah.
The rapper argued that the case was “basically a money grab” by the bouncer, and was quickly released on bond. But last month his probation supervisors from the earlier federal gun case said that he should spend a year and a half in prison because he had “failed to capitalize on the opportunity afforded by the court” when it allowed him to remain free.
