Boosie Badazz paid $600,000 to two political operatives who promised they could deliver a Trump pardon, the pardon never came, and he is now in arbitration trying to claw back half the money, according to an investigation published Monday by NOTUS. The operatives are Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman of JM Burkman & Associates. In 2022, those two men were convicted in an Ohio court over a robocall scheme that hit 85,000 voters in predominantly Black neighborhoods with false information designed to scare them away from voting by mail. That is who a Black rapper from Baton Rouge handed six figures to.
The Boosie Trump pardon deal was signed on September 30, 2025. Boosie, whose legal name is Torence Hatch, was staring down a federal sentencing hearing for possessing a firearm as a felon, stemming from a loaded gun in his waistband during an Instagram Live while filming a music video in San Diego in 2023. He had already tried the direct route, posting publicly at Trump asking him to look at the case. He had appealed to Alice Marie Johnson, the administration’s so-called pardon czar. Neither worked. Then Wohl and Burkman came calling.Boosie described the pitch to NOTUS in plain terms. They were aggressive. They talked like they had Trump on speed dial.
The contract, which NOTUS reviewed, required the full $600,000 up front. Half of it, $300,000, was nonrefundable. The other $300,000 was supposed to come back if no pardon arrived by the deadline and Boosie requested the refund in writing. That refund clause is the entire fight. It is also, according to two lawyers and a pardon advocate who spoke to NOTUS anonymously, deeply unusual. They said they had never seen a pardon contract with a refund guarantee in it. One had seen something similar, but at a far lower retainer.
The document itself is a mess. It is riddled with typos and errors, including a refund deadline listed as close of business on January 31, 2025, which is several months before the contract was even signed. Both sides later acknowledged the date was supposed to read 2026, according to Boosie’s lawyer. So the Boosie Trump pardon agreement, a $600,000 arrangement to obtain executive clemency from the most powerful office in the country, contains a deadline that had already passed on the day it was executed.
Then came the assurances. Over the course of the relationship, Burkman and Wohl kept telling Boosie and his criminal defense lawyer, Meghan Blanco, that things were moving. Texts and emails reviewed by NOTUS show them claiming that a near complete pardon application had been delivered to the pardon attorney and that White House counsel was reviewing it. On New Year’s Eve, Burkman texted that Trump had it in hand and was ready to sign. On New Year’s Day, Blanco got a phone call telling her the pardon had already been signed and the White House simply had not announced it yet.
Imagine getting that call. Imagine what that year felt like for about twenty four hours.
There was no pardon. There was never a pardon. A White House official told NOTUS flatly that Wohl and Burkman had no role in the process whatsoever, that the clemency team had never heard from either of them, and that having those two attached to a case would actually hurt a person’s chances of getting one. The Boosie Trump pardon was not slow walked or held up. According to the people who actually handle clemency, it was never in the building.
In January, a federal judge sentenced Boosie to ten days of time served and three years of supervised release. It was not the prison term he feared, but it was not a pardon either. Federal prosecutors are now seeking to revoke that supervised release after accusing him of violating its conditions in May.
Wohl and Burkman are not backing down. Their firm told NOTUS it cannot think of a single client for whom it has done more work than Boosie, and described a massive, highly tailored advocacy campaign across Congress, the executive branch, and political influencers and media figures. Burkman told TMZ that in thirty years of lobbying he doubts they have ever worked harder, that the refund provision Boosie is pointing to was never actually agreed to, and that Boosie’s chances were badly damaged by an arrest earlier this year in Texas for an alleged crime of violence. Their lawyer, Charles Camp, has filed a motion to dismiss claiming the lobbyists never even saw the signed retainer agreement until arbitration began, a claim Boosie and his lawyer dispute.
There is one more wrinkle. Burkman also told Boosie the firm could not issue a refund because it owes millions of dollars in fines and other debts. So the men who took $600,000 for a pardon they could not deliver are now arguing they are too broke to give any of it back. The lawyers who spoke to NOTUS pointed out that best practice for a contract with a refund clause is to hold the refundable portion in trust. Neither Wohl nor Burkman would answer whether they did that.
The Boosie Trump pardon story is not really about one rapper getting taken. It is about what the pardon process has turned into. Clemency used to run through the Department of Justice pardon attorney, through layers of review, before anything reached the president’s desk. Clemency attorney Mark Osler told Billboard last year that the mechanism is falling apart, that nobody is clear on what the process even is anymore, and that people are filling out forms, appealing to the pardon czar, trying to catch Trump at Mar-a-Lago, or going on Fox News to pitch their case on television. Into that vacuum walked a lobbying industry. JM Burkman & Associates has taken pardon money before. Two separate clients hired the firm for presidential pardons in 2019 and 2020. Neither one got pardoned. The firm’s federal lobbying revenue has been climbing anyway, up from $1.3 million in 2023 and roughly $1.7 million in 2024.
And then there is the part that should stop you cold. Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman built their public reputations as far right operatives, and their 2022 Ohio conviction came from a scheme that specifically targeted Black voters in Black neighborhoods with lies meant to keep them from voting. Those are the men who took Boosie’s money. Those are the men who told him his freedom was one signature away.
The arbitration with the American Arbitration Association is ongoing. Boosie is still fighting his federal case. He has a separate pardon application filed directly with the White House and, by his own account, still hopes it lands. He is out $600,000 and, for now, has nothing to show for it but a contract with the wrong year on it.
