The Tiger King is back in the spotlight. Made famous by the 2020 Netflix documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, which was given second and third seasons last year, Joe Exotic is known for his feud with fellow big cat owner Carole Baskin. This culminated in the arrest and incarceration of Exotic, with the reality TV star sentenced to 22 years in prison after the police charged him for attempting to orchestrate Baskin’s murder. During Donald Trump’s presidency, Exotic pleaded for a presidential pardon that never came.
Exotic has now reignited his efforts for a pardon under current president Joe Biden. This follows the news about WNBA star Brittney Griner, who spent ten months in the Russian prison system after she was found with hashish oil in Moscow. Her nine-year sentence has been heavily criticized, with many Americans calling for Biden to help bring her home. This came to fruition with the United States government striking a deal with Russia to swap prisoners, offering convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for Griner’s freedom.
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Speaking with TMZ from prison, Exotic says that the prisoner swap is an insult to the people who’ve been “wrongfully detained” at home in the United States. He thinks that one way Biden can help make this right is by offering him a pardon, as he’s one such person. Exotic continues to maintain that he’s innocent of the charges that landed him with a sentence of more than two decades behind bars, criticizing how a “dangerous man” like Bout can be released while he remains locked up.
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“The whole Brittney Griner and Trevor Reed prisoner swap is a slap in every American’s face that is wrongfully detained in the American Federal Prison System, including myself,” Exotic said in a phone interview.
He added, “A dangerous man was released for Brittney Griner to be free. It’s time Joe Exotic gets to go home for Christmas to be home with [boyfriend] Seth and his son for the first time in five Christmases.”
Biden has not publicly addressed whether he plans to pardon Exotic, though it doesn’t seem likely to be high atop the president’s to-do list. The closest Exotic seems to have gotten to a pardon was an acknowledgment by former president Trump. When he was asked at a press conference in 2020 about Exotic’s pleas for a pardon, Trump responded that he knows “nothing about him” before adding that he would “look into it.” It’s hard to say just how much research Trump did into Exotic’s case, but the pardon obviously never happened.
