Emory Jones has been pardoned by Donald Trump, closing out a federal drug conviction that has followed him for more than 25 years. The pardon was one of 30 clemency actions Trump took on Thursday, Sept. 3, and it was announced Friday by Alice Marie Johnson, the White House official known as the pardon czar, who oversees clemency requests.
Jones was sentenced in 2000 to just under 16 years in federal prison on cocaine charges. He was already close with Jay-Z at that point, and the rapper did not treat the sentence as the end of the relationship. Jay-Z wrote to U.S. District Judge Benson Legg asking for a reduction and told the court he would give Jones a job when he came home, which gave the judge something concrete to weigh: a stable landing spot on the outside. Legg cut 37 months off the sentence. Jones walked out of federal custody in 2010.
Jones joined Roc Nation and rose to Head of Lifestyle, and he co-founded Paper Planes, the apparel brand that turned the paper airplane logo into a fixture in streetwear. He became a known figure in his own right rather than a footnote in somebody else’s story, which is part of why this pardon is landing the way it is.
Anyone who bought Kingdom Come in 2006 has already heard his voice. “Do U Wanna Ride,” the John Legend collaboration produced by Kanye West, opens with audio of Jones calling Jay-Z from prison. It is one of the more personal moments in Jay-Z’s catalog, and it put the friendship on record years before most people knew the name attached to it.
This is not a release and it is not a commutation, which is when a sentence gets shortened while the conviction stays on the books. A pardon wipes away the ongoing legal penalties that trail a federal conviction for life, things like restrictions on voting in some states, gun ownership, certain professional licenses and the box you check on applications. Emory Jones has been home for 16 years. The record is what he just got cleared.
Jessica Jackson, CEO of the REFORM Alliance, the criminal justice reform organization Jay-Z co-founded with Meek Mill and Michael Rubin, celebrated the news publicly and said she was crying happy tears for Jones. She credited Johnson, who was herself serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug conviction before her sentence was commuted in 2018, and who now runs clemency efforts from inside the White House. Johnson singled Jones out in her announcement, describing him as someone who came home determined to build a different life.
The rest of the clemency list was a mix. According to the New York Times, the 30 recipients included a former Philadelphia union boss convicted in a bribery case and a former Navy sailor imprisoned on firearms offenses. Reuters reports Trump has now issued pardons or commutations to more than 1,700 people since returning to the White House in January 2025.
