Snoop Dogg Has Been Quietly Asking Donald Trump To Commute Death Row Co-Founder's Sentence
Snoop Dogg and Donald Trump have a complicated relationship, to say the least. In 2017, Snoop teamed up with the Toronto-based instrumentalist group BADBADNOTGOOD for the “Lavender” video, which saw the West Coast gangsta rap legend holding a fake gun to a Trump impersonator’s head and pulling the trigger.
Upon seeing it, Trump fired off a tweet slamming Uncle Snoop, “Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time!”
Snoop hasn’t kept his feelings about the outgoing president over the years, but it looks like he needs a Hail Mary from him on his last full day at the White House.
According to the Daily Beast, the D-O-Double-G has been quietly working with a pair of activists as part of a “last-ditch effort” to convince Trump to commute the sentence of Death Row Records co-founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris, who has been in prison for over 30 years on drug trafficking and murder charges.
Snoop reportedly brought Harris’ case to his former producer Weldon Angelos, who was pardoned by Trump in 2020. Angelos had been sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling less than $400 worth of weed to an undercover cop.
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From there, Angelos contacted criminal justice advocate Alice Johnson who also had her sentence pardoned by Trump in 2018. Johnson brought the case directly to Trump not long after meeting with Snoop and Angelos.
“The president knows how much this case means to me,” Johnson told the Daily Beast. “In reviewing Michael Harris’ case, his story, and what he’s gone through, this is such an unfair case. … He should have been home a decade ago. I really felt for this man. I am very hopeful that he will be home before the end of the Trump administration.”
Johnson says Snoop is “appreciative” of Trump’s prison reform policies and had a message from him to deliver to Trump, “I appreciate what you’ve done for some of our brothers, even if you don’t release Mr. Harris.”
Harris, who helped found the iconic Hip Hop label alongside Suge Knight, was convicted of attempted murder and kidnapping in 1988, and is currently incarcerated at a federal correctional facility in Lompoc, California. While behind bars, the 58-year-old has reportedly reinvented himself as an activist and is pushing for prison reform.
Trump is expected to pardon up to 100 people on Tuesday (January 19), including Lil Wayne, other “high-profile rappers,” white-collar criminals and several White House staffers.