President Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of Larry Hoover, the infamous former gang leader from Chicago, according to a White House official.
Hoover, the co-founder of Chicago gang Gangster Disciples, has been serving multiple life sentences since the 1970s. He has multiple state and federal convictions, including for murder and founding a criminal enterprise. He has made repeated requests to shorten his sentence, including under the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill passed during Trump’s first term.
Hoover and his family members have long maintained that he is no longer affiliated with Gangster Disciples and does not maintain any ties to the gang. But every request to amend his sentence has been denied, until now.
“I’m a completely different person than the man who went to prison in 1997,” Hoover told a court in 2024.
Trending
Hoover has been serving out his sentence at ADX Florence, a supermax prison in Colorado considered to be one of the highest-security prisons in the country.
Hoover’s commutation comes after a series of public pleas from prominent Black celebrities. Hoover was the subject of 2021’s “Free Larry Hoover” benefit concert, organized by Kanye West and Drake.
This week, the White House has pardoned a series of convicted Americans. That includes Todd and Julie Chrisley, reality TV stars who were charged with tax evasion and bank fraud; a former Virginia sheriff who was convicted on fraud and bribery charges; and Paul Walczak, a CEO who pled guilty of tax crimes and whose mother was a major Trump donor.
Trump also on Wednesday issued a full pardon to Michael Grimm, the White House official confirmed. Grimm, a former Republican congressman from New York, pleaded guilty in 2014 to tax fraud charges. Grimm completed his sentence of less than a year in prison shortly after, before losing a race to reclaim his old seat.
—
Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS.
Author
