Donald Trump still hasn’t brought back make-believe gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador prison. But he just commuted the federal sentence of known and convicted gang leader Larry Hoover.
Via The Guardian:
Hoover, 74, is the co-founder of Gangster Disciples, a gang described in court documents as “large and vicious” that sold “great quantities of cocaine, heroin, and other drugs in Chicago”.
He was convicted in 1973 for ordering the killing of a 19-year-old neighborhood drug dealer and given a sentence of 150 to 200 years.
In 1997, he was given six life sentences after being found guilty of federal drug conspiracy, extortion, money laundering and continuing to engage in a criminal enterprise.
The Guardian also noted that Hoover has since renounced his criminal past and has previously tried to shorten his sentence under Trump’s First Step Act. But the Chicago Tribune reported that prosecutors alleged last year that Hoover was still carrying on gang activities.
I’m all for criminal justice reform and I have no problem with Hoover’s commutation if he really has rehabilitated himself.
But Donald Trump postures as someone so anti-gang that his administration has called for immigrant gang members to be treated as terrorists and, essentially, locked up, if not assassinated, without the due process our Constitution is supposed to provide. If Sen. Chris Van Hollen hadn’t gone to El Salvador on the Abrego Garcia case, he’d probably still be locked up in that country’s torture prison. Even though the Trump administration has admitted it made a mistake in deporting him.
Does the fact that Hoover is American make such a big difference? Or did someone, like maybe Kanye West, influence Trump with a nice "gift?"
In any event, it’s not as though Felon 47 set Hoover free. He’s still serving a 200-year sentence for his state conviction for murder. That was unaffected by Trump’s pardon. So, what did Trump accomplish with the commutation? Other than, maybe, a nice “gift" for himself?
