President Donald Trump has granted clemency to former Major League Baseball star Darryl Strawberry for a 1995 tax evasion charge.
Trump, a White House official stated, “has approved a pardon for Darryl Strawberry, three-time World Series champion and eight-time MLB All-Star.”
“Mr. Strawberry served time and paid back taxes after pleading guilty to one count of tax evasion,” the official added, highlighting his subsequent sobriety, his Christian religion, and his efforts to begin a restoration center in Florida.
Strawberry, who performed for the New York Yankees, the New York Mets, and different groups throughout his MLB profession, pleaded responsible to tax evasion in 1995, which The New York Times reported at the time averted a trial on three tax-related counts that might have landed him in jail for fifteen years.
Strawberry thanked Trump in an Instagram put up that included a number of photos of the 2 males and recounted studying in regards to the clemency plan in a cellphone name with the president on Thursday.
“President Trump spoke warmly about my baseball days in NYC, praising me as one the greatest player of the ‘80s and celebrating the Mets. Then, he told me he was granting me a full pardon from my past,” he wrote. “I was overwhelmed with gratitude—thanking God for setting me free from my past, helping me become a better Man,Husband and Father.”
The former baseball participant additionally served time in jail in an unrelated state case. In 2002, he was sentenced to 18 months in jail for violating his probation on a conviction on drug and solicitation of prostitution prices, in line with ESPN. He was launched after 11 months.
Strawberry is the second alum of Trump’s former actuality present, “The Celebrity Apprentice,” to obtain a pardon. Trump pardoned fellow contestant and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in February.
Trump has used his clemency powers extra aggressively in his second time period, pardoning greater than 1,000 individuals charged within the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol and commuting the sentence of disgraced former GOP Rep. George Santos, together with different allies.
The president got here underneath scrutiny throughout a current interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” when he was pressed on a current pardon for Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao on a cash laundering charge.
“I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch hunt,” he stated within the interview.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later instructed reporters that Trump doesn’t know Zhao “personally,” however that there’s a “thorough review process” with the Department of Justice and White House Counsel’s workplace who provide Trump clemency suggestions.
This story has been up to date with further particulars.
NCS’s Marshall Cohen and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.