Joe Exotic will begin the first year of his 22-year sentence.
Joseph Maldonado-Passage, otherwise known as Joe Exotic from Netflix's widely-watched "Tiger King," has fired back against Donald Trump who failed to pardon him of his crimes on his last day of presidency.
"I was too innocent and too GAY to deserve a Pardon from Trump," the 57-year-old wrote in a Tweet. "I only mattered to Don Jr. when he needed to make a comment about me to boost his social media post. Boy were we all stupid to believe he actually stood for Equal Justice? His corrupt friends all come first."
Exotic's lawyers were confident that their client would be pardoned as part of Trump's last-minute executive moves, so much so that they publicly donned the black limo waiting to pick up Exotic outside of the Texas prison in Fort Worth.
“We are as disappointed that the president did not sign Joe’s pardon, as we were confident yesterday that he would,” his lawyers wrote in a statement Wednesday, according to the Seattle Times.
They added that Exotic's fans had a "hard time getting out of bed this morning."
In September, Exotic and his legal team submitted a pardon application to the White House. Two days after sending it, their application was denied. In a rebuke, Exotic sent a complaint filed Dec. 16, arguing that their pardon application was not directly handed to the president himself, Inside Edition Digital previously reported.
A judge had later ruled that his application had been accepted and was "currently pending" in the Department of Justice's website," People Magazine reported. But, the judge also reportedly noted that Exotic still needed to prove that a "case or controversy still exists."
On Trump's final day of his presidency, he issued his final rounds of pardons to 140 people, including his former chief strategist Steve Bannon and rapper Lil Wayne, FiveThirtyEight reported.
Exotic had even gone to lengths to reach out to influential figures, including television personality and prison reform activist Kim Kardashian, who has served as a public advocate fighting for the clemency of wrongly convicted prisoners, Inside Edition Digital previously reported.
Exotic became known after the release of the docuseries "Tiger King," for his larger-than-life personality and scandalous murder-for-hire plot against zookeeper competitor Carole Baskin.
He is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence. He was also convicted on eight counts of falsifying wildlife records and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act.
RELATED STORIES
