Boosie has a question for everybody calling him soft for taking his failed pardon deal to court.The Baton Rouge rapper posted a video to X on Monday addressing the criticism that has followed him since his “60 Minutes” appearance the night before. His answer to the people saying he should have kept it in the street and handled his business himself was direct. “You want me to go shoot government lobbyists?” he asked, before adding that anybody suggesting that has lost their mind.
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His whole argument is that people are looking at the wrong thing. He said that to operate at this level you have to be a businessman or a businesswoman, and you cannot afford to be ignorant about how any of this works. If you pay government lobbyists a substantial amount of money and they sign a contract they do not honor, they get sued. That is the entire point he kept returning to. He compared it to a record deal, saying that if you owe somebody five albums and three million dollars and you do not deliver, you get sued for that too.“This is business,” he said. “This ain’t no street [expletive].”
He addressed his own reputation head-on, saying he knows what he is and that he is a real one to the heart, but that nobody is going to talk him into a reaction that costs him his freedom over money. He framed the decision as taking the fight to where the other side actually lives. They came for his pocket, so he is coming for theirs. Simple as that, he said, and people get sued every day.
On the size of the opponent, he acknowledged what everybody watching is thinking: that this is the government and these are powerful people. His response was that he fears no man but God, that he stands up to the roughest and toughest, and that plenty of people in his position would have tucked their head and taken the loss. He said that is not him.
He also described what he says the agreement actually said. According to Boosie, the terms were that if the pardon did not come through, the client would get $300,000 back in less than three days. He says that when he asked for it, the response he got was that they would file for bankruptcy instead. That, in his telling, is when a business dispute became a lawsuit. He also said these are real government lobbyists using people at the top of the government to steal.
Here is where the other side comes in. Boosie is pursuing an arbitration claim against Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl of JM Burkman & Associates, which he initiated in July. He says he paid the two of them $600,000 upfront in 2025 to campaign for a pardon in his federal gun case, a conviction that carried three years of supervised release, 300 hours of community service, and a $50,000 fine. He told Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” that what he was led to believe was simple: bring the money and the pardon happens. It never did. He is seeking to recover half of what he paid.
Burkman and Wohl deny doing anything improper. Burkman told “60 Minutes” that because no finalized written agreement was ever executed, whatever existed between them was an oral arrangement, and he said flatly that they do not owe Boosie anything and that he should drop the claim. They maintain their work was standard, legal lobbying and advocacy.
The segment, titled “The Pardon Economy,” was a broader investigation into an industry of lawyers, lobbyists and political operatives charging enormous sums to push clemency requests. CBS used hidden cameras while Burkman and Wohl pitched a different pardon seeker on a $300,000 effort that they said could involve events, influencers and members of Congress. The report said some brokers charge as much as $3 million, and that offering the service is not itself illegal.
The White House told “60 Minutes” that money has no influence on clemency decisions and that anyone paying brokers is wasting it.
Boosie spent Sunday night complaining that the broadcast cut most of what he said, including his account of sitting down with the administration’s pardon czar at the White House to explain in person why he believed he deserved clemency. This video is the second thing he has posted since it aired, and the audience he is talking to this time is not CBS.
