The quest to free Chicago drug kingpin Larry Hoover included a stop at Mar-a-Lago.
A New York lawyer advocating for Hoover said he spoke with President Donald Trump several months ago at the resort where he lives in Palm Beach, Florida. It was among a series of high-profile meetings between Hoover’s lawyers and Trump and his top aides since 2018.
On Wednesday, their years-long advocacy paid off with Trump commuting Hoover's federal sentence of life in prison on a drug conspiracy conviction.
One of Hoover’s lawyers, Joshua Dubin, executive director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, said he approached the president at his Florida golf club and brought up his notorious client.
“He immediately recognized the case and asked if I believe that Larry was rehabilitated and had evolved,” said Dubin, who responded that Hoover’s letters over the years show his “denunciation of street life and that his [life] is a cautionary tale.”
Dubin said the president was concerned about the possibility of Hoover returning to crime.
He said he told Trump that Hoover is 74 years old and Trump said, “Oh.”
“It connected with him,” Dubin said. “I said the chances of recidivism are lower than 1%.”
That brief encounter at Mar-a-Lago wasn’t Trump’s first exposure to Hoover’s case.
In 2018, Chicago rapper Kanye West and Justin Moore, another Hoover lawyer from Texas, met with Trump in the Oval Office to make his case for a commutation.
At the time, Trump didn’t seem to know about Hoover. West told the president that Hoover was an icon in Chicago and “an example of a man that was turning his life around” and a “beacon for us.”
Then, Hoover caught a lucky break.
Alice Marie Johnson — the woman who would become Trump’s “pardons czar” on Feb. 20 — attended the Free Larry Hoover Benefit Concert featuring Kanye West and Drake at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Dec. 9, 2021.
And Johnson, who had been pardoned by Trump during his first term for a drug conviction, became interested in Hoover’s cause. Moore was there, too, and he and Johnson maintained contact.
“When she became ‘pardon czar,’ our conversations heated up,” Moore said.
Moore flew to Johnson's home state of Mississippi where he said he presented evidence of Hoover’s rehabilitation.
About a month ago, Hoover’s legal team filed a petition, about 200 pages long, formally seeking a presidential commutation. Dubin said he met with Johnson and Trump’s lawyers about two weeks ago in the White House, where he gave another presentation.
It worked. Hoover got his two-page commutation with Trump's jagged, bold signature on the bottom.
Moore said he spoke with Hoover Thursday at the supermax federal prison in Colorado where he was still being held. He had already heard the news on TV and from other inmates.
“He was jubilant,” Moore said. “I don’t think he thought this day would come. He hopes to get home one day to his family.”
Trump ordered the Bureau of Prisons to release Hoover “immediately." It's unclear where he'll ultimately end up — in another federal prison under an agreement with the state of Illinois, or in a facility run by the Illinois Department of Corrections.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed Friday that Hoover left its custody Thursday. Meanwhile, the Colorado Department of Corrections on Friday listed a 74-year-old "Larry Hoover," who is serving a life sentence, among its inmates.
Representatives of the Colorado and Illinois departments of correction didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Even if Hoover is being held by state authorities in Colorado, it's not clear he'll remain there.
Hoover’s legal team intends to lobby Gov. JB Pritzker to seek clemency for Hoover, who was also sentenced to 200 years in prison on a state murder conviction.
Pritzker, at least from the initial reaction from his office, doesn’t seem inclined to do that.
The governor’s office said Hoover has a sentence “he needs to continue serving” and would have to petition the Illinois Prisoner Review Board if he wants to seek parole or clemency. Over the years, since the early 1970s, the board has regularly denied Hoover’s requests for parole.
Politicians have lined up on both sides of the question of whether Trump should have granted clemency to Hoover.
Rahm Emanuel, former Chicago mayor, U.S. ambassador to Japan and adviser to presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, criticized it.
“This is a notorious gang leader who had many, many people killed on his direction. And this will have severe consequences. I always thought when I was growing up in politics, the Republican Party was supposed to be the party of law and order. This will be an incredible twist about law and order, letting a gang leader like [Hoover] of the Disciples, out of jail,” he said on CNN.
But Illinois state Sen. Willie Preston, D-Chicago, had the opposite take.
He called Hoover’s commutation “an undeniable day of redemption in America. I grew up in the same neighborhood as Larry Hoover. And for many of us from Englewood, his name was bigger than just one man — it was a presence, a story, a cautionary tale.
“Larry Hoover’s transformation, from gang leader to someone who preached peace, civic responsibility and turning away from street life, should make us all think,” he said in a statement.
For Moore and Dubin, Trump’s commutation was just a start. Dubin said they’ll try to persuade Pritzker to grant Hoover clemency.
They know it will be an uphill climb, considering this statement from the governor’s office: “Unlike Donald Trump, Illinois follows the law. That includes our state justice system.”
At a news conference Thursday, Pritzker was mum about Hoover’s commutation and didn't take questions from reporters.
Dubin said Pritzker “doesn’t have to punt to the Prisoner Review Board.” He added: “He can do this with the stroke of a pen.
“It’s just unfortunate to hear the governor’s office already try to politicize this. It is not about us versus them. … I am confident the governor will do the right thing.”
