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Joe Exotic Claims In Presidential Pardon Request He Has Been Sexually Assaulted By Jail Staff
In a pardon request, the "Tiger King" star, who is currently behind bars for trying to have Carole Baskin killed, claims he has been assaulted so badly that his hands are damaged.
In a pardon request addressed to the president, the star of “Tiger King” is claiming that he has been sexually assaulted by jail staff while behind bars.
Joe Exotic, whose legal name is Joe Maldonado-Passage, has penned letters to President Trump as part of a pardon application which will be submitted to the presidential administration on Thursday, CBS News reports.
Within the 257-page document, Exotic told the president that he has been sexually assaulted while behind bars, according to TMZ.
"I have been sexually assaulted by jail staff, beat up and tied in a chair to the point the skin came off my arms,” he claimed.
Exotic is currently serving 22 years for hiring a hitman to kill his longtime rival and animal activist Carole Baskin, though he insists he has been wrongfully convicted. Before his downfall, which is colorfully depicted in “Tiger King,” he ran the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma, which has since closed after it was awarded to Baskin in a legal judgement.
Exotic alleged that his hands have been damaged from abuse suffered behind bars and that it is even difficult to write.
However, TMZ claimed that a federal prison source told them "there was no such assault."
A request for comment from Federal Medical Center Fort Worth, where Exotic is currently incarcerated, was not immediately returned to Oxygen.com.
In his pardon request, Exotic told Trump to "listen to the millions who see the truth" and "your own son Donald Jr,” CBS News reports.
Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., who said he binged the popular docuseries in just two sittings, joked in April during a SiriusXM’s “Jim Norton and Sam Roberts” radio show interview that he would lobby his dad to pardon Exotic. President Donald Trump then mused that he'd "take a look."
"Allow me to make you proud, to make America proud, to make the world proud. Be my hero please," Exotic pleaded in the request.
Exotic’s camp is also asking for his fans to pen letters of support. They claim the letters “will help make history and contribute to Joe Exotic achieving his long past due justice.”
