Louisiana rapper Boosie Badazz is demanding $300,000 back from a Washington lobbying firm after they failed to deliver on a promised presidential pardon, setting up what could be the first major dispute in Trump's sprawling clemency marketplace.
The artist, whose legal name is Torence Hatch, paid JM Burkman & Associates $600,000 in 2025 to push his pardon application through the White House. The firm, run by lobbyists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, assured him they had connections at the highest levels. But the pardon never came through, and now Hatch is pursuing the matter through arbitration.
The conflict exposes a murky corner of Trump's second term: a booming industry of lawyers, lobbyists, and pardon advocates charging hefty fees to clients betting the president will erase their criminal records. Millions have flowed into this shadowy network based largely on claims of insider access and influence.
Hatch's 2023 conviction stemmed from a San Diego music video shoot. Police conducting surveillance of an Instagram Live stream tied to gang activity identified and stopped his vehicle, finding a loaded pistol in his waistband. As a convicted felon with a 2011 drug-trafficking conviction on his record, he was barred from possessing firearms. He pleaded guilty rather than face trial, accepting three years of supervised release, 300 hours of community service, and a $50,000 fine.
A presidential pardon would have erased the gun conviction and freed him from the sentence. When Burkman and Wohl's firm came on board, Hatch said they projected absolute confidence. "They were real aggressive," he told Notus, the publication that first reported the dispute. "They were talking like they had Trump on speed dial."
The firm assured Hatch's legal team that Trump had actually signed the pardon and they were simply waiting for the White House to announce it. That announcement never arrived. When Hatch's attorneys contacted the Trump White House directly, they received a different story: no pardon request had even been received.
Now the two sides are locked in a contractual battle. Hatch wants $300,000 returned, claiming the fee agreement included a refund clause if the pardon failed. Burkman and Wohl's firm flatly denies any such provision existed. "No provision to return half the fee was ever actually agreed to," they said in a statement.
The firm contends it mounted an aggressive effort on Hatch's behalf. According to their account, the campaign included direct appeals to Trump allies like Laura Loomer, asking her to bring the application to Trump's attention through his executive assistant Natalie Harp. They say they worked Congress, the executive branch, and political influencers. "We continue to believe that Boosie very much deserves a pardon," the firm said.
Burkman and Wohl also claimed to Notus that they were effectively broke, suggesting they couldn't pay even if they wanted to. The statement contradicts their earlier aggressive pitch to a wealthy artist with deep industry connections.
Other pardon attorneys told Notus that a refund clause is virtually unheard of in this line of work. That detail underscores just how little standardization exists in the clemency economy, where success rates are impossible to verify and fees bear no clear relationship to actual outcomes.
Burkman and Wohl bring a colored history to their dispute with Hatch. In 2022, the two pleaded guilty to running an illegal robocall campaign targeting Black voters in Ohio. They settled that case for $1.25 million to New York authorities and $5 million to the FCC. They have also been linked to unsuccessful attempts to manufacture sexual harassment allegations against former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the late Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In another incident, they fed false information to the Washington Post about a purported FBI raid on Burkman's home.
The dispute between Hatch and the firm also connects to broader questions about pardon brokering under Trump. In March, New York lawyer Joshua Nass was charged with attempted extortion in a pardon-related case involving a $500,000 debt dispute. Nass had worked with Burkman on a pardon for Joseph Schwartz, a nursing home operator convicted of fraud. That case suggests disputes over fees and outcomes may become increasingly common as clients realize their expensive clemency campaigns did not produce results.
Author James Rodriguez: "The clemency economy is about to get a hard look from the courts, and these disputes are only going to multiply as pardon seekers realize their money bought them nothing but broken promises."
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