Trump to ‘seriously’ consider pardon for boxer Ali
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has said he is thinking “very seriously” about pardoning Muhammad Ali – even though the US supreme court vacated the boxing champion’s conviction in 1971.
Speaking as he left the White House for the G7 summit in Canada, Mr Trump also said he is considering thousands of additional pardons, including one for the boxing great.
“I’m thinking about somebody that you all know very well. And he went through a lot. And he wasn’t very popular then,” Mr Trump said. “He certainly, his memory is very popular now.”
It was not immediately clear why Ali would need a pardon because he has no criminal record. The US supreme court overturned his conviction for resisting the draft in 1971. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about why the president feels one is warranted.
Ali was born Cassius Clay, and changed his name after converting to Islam in the 1960s. He refused to serve in the Vietnam War because of his religious beliefs, declaring himself a conscientious objector and famously saying: “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong.”
He was stripped of his heavyweight crown in 1967. Ali’s legal fight ended in 1971, when the Supreme Court ruled in his favour. He regained the boxing title in 1974 in the classic ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ fight in the former Zaire against George Foreman. Ali died in 2016.
Earlier this week, Mr Trump commuted the life sentence of Alice Johnson, whose cause was championed by reality television star Kim Kardashian West.
Last month he granted a posthumous pardon to boxing’s first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, more than 100 years after many saw as his racially charged conviction. Johnson was convicted in 1913 by an allwhite jury of violating the Mann Act for travelling with his white girlfriend. That law made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral” purposes.