An American Rapper Paid a Trump-Connected Lobbying Firm $600,000 for a Pardon That Never Came, and Now He Wants Half His Money Back

Rapper Boosie Badazz paid $600,000 for a presidential pardon that never materialized, and the firm he hired to secure it is now fighting him over whether to give any of the money back.

The rapper, whose legal name is Torence Hatch, was seeking to erase his 2023 conviction for carrying a loaded gun as a felon. To make it happen, he turned to a lobbying operation with ties to Donald Trump. Two of the lobbyists he hired were Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, a pair who once paid $1.25m to New York and $5m to the FCC over an illegal robocall scheme that targeted Black voters. In 2025 Hatch gave their firm $600,000 upfront to push for the pardon.

The pardon never came. Hatch is now in arbitration over whether the firm has to return half the fee, which it flatly denies agreeing to, telling Notus that “no provision to return half the fee was ever actually agreed to.”

Hatch says the lobbyists came on strong at the start. “They were real aggressive,” he told Notus. “They were talking like they had Trump on speed dial.” The firm says it ran “a massive, highly tailored advocacy campaign across Congress, the executive branch and leading political influencers and media figures,” and still believes Boosie deserves a pardon.

Part of that campaign, according to Notus, meant leaning on Trump ally Laura Loomer to get the application in front of the president. But when Hatch called on her publicly, Loomer said: “I also have no idea who you are and have never heard of your case.” She added that Burkman “is using people’s names without permission to get business,” and that you can’t pay for a pardon in the first place.

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