Early Friday morning, President Donald Trump said he was considering granting a posthumous pardon to late boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
"I am thinking about Muhammad Ali," Trump told reporters at the White House shortly before boarding Air Force 1 for the Group of Seven nations summit in Quebec City. Ali, who died in 2016, was convicted of draft evasion in 1967 and sentenced to five years in prison after refusing to be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War.
Trump, who recently pardoned Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, also said he has a list of several thousand other names that he is reviewing for potential pardons.
Trump stated that he is "looking at literally thousands of names."
Ali eventually appealed his conviction, and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1971 in a unanimous decision. They concluded that the Department of Justice had improperly told the draft board that Ali's stance wasn't motivated by his religious belief.
Earlier this week Trump made headlines after commuting the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a first-time nonviolent drug offender serving a life sentence. He made the decision a week after Kim Kardashian West met with the president in the Oval Office to lobby on Johnson's behalf.
Source: foxnews.com
