Boosie Badazz's $600K Pardon Gamble Blows Up

When you’re trying to get a presidential pardon, the last thing you want to hear is silence—especially after dropping six figures. But that’s exactly where rapper Boosie Badazz finds himself after what he’s calling a bait-and-switch scheme by political operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman.

Here’s the pitch: last fall, Wohl and Burkman convinced Boosie—whose legal name is Torence Hatch—that they had serious pull inside Trump’s orbit. According to reporting, they acted like they practically had the president on speed dial. Boosie believed them enough to pay $600,000 for their services. On New Year’s Day, things seemed to be moving fast: Boosie’s lawyer got a call saying the pardon had already been signed and was just waiting for a White House announcement. But that announcement never came. In fact, nothing came. The pardon vanished into thin air.

Now Boosie is suing, invoking a contract clause that requires a $300,000 refund if no pardon materializes. Fair deal, right? Not according to Wohl and Burkman. They’re claiming the refund provision was never actually agreed to, and besides, their firm is effectively broke thanks to millions in fines from past legal troubles. Burkman’s defense to TMZ?“Boosie has no reason to be unhappy. In 30 years of lobbying, I doubt we have ever done more work and harder work.”He also points out that Boosie’s case got tougher after an arrest for an alleged crime of violence in Texas earlier this year.

Here’s where it gets really interesting: a White House official flatly denied that Wohl or Burkman had any role in the pardon process at all. The clemency team said they’d“never heard from”either of them and warned that their involvement would actually hurt someone’s chances of getting a pardon. Translation: these guys might’ve been running a con the whole time, or at the very least, had zero inside access to what they were promising.

Boosie did eventually get a sentence of time served on his federal gun case, and he’s still holding out hope for a pardon through a separate application filed directly with the White House. But his immediate priority isn’t clemency anymore—it’s getting his half-million dollars back. The legal battle now is less about redemption and more about recovery.