After President Joe Biden made a deal with Russia to free WNBA star Brittney Griner, Joe Exotic thinks he should be next and is trying to get out of jail. The “Tiger King” star said that the Griner and Trevor Reed prisoner swap,
is a slap in every American’s face that is wrongfully detained in the American Federal Prison System, including myself.
He kept making his case to the President, saying that he was innocent and bringing up his former co-star Carole Baskin. A source says that Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was given a new sentence of 21 years in prison for murder-for-hire and killing and selling tigers.
During his trial, it was said that he paid a hitman $3,000 to go from Oklahoma to Florida and kill Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist. Separately, it was said that in December 2017, he tried to hire a hitman to kill Baskin for $10,000, but the hitman turned out to be an FBI agent working undercover. Since Donald Trump was president, Exotic has been fighting for his freedom.
A dangerous man was released for Brittney Griner to be free. It’s time Joe Exotic gets to go home for Christmas to be home with [boyfriend] Seth and his son for the first time in 5 Christmases,
he said in an audio tape obtained by a source.
Griner got out of jail this week after being locked up for more than 10 months. As part of a deal, Russia let “Merchant of Death” dubber Viktor Bout go free in exchange for Griner’s freedom. In February, the athlete was arrested at a Russian airport after officials found cannabis oil in vape canisters she was carrying. Griner is a star for the Phoenix Mercury in the NBA, and she has won two gold medals at the Olympics. Because she was an openly gay Black woman who was jailed in a country that was known to be against the LGBTQ community, her detention in Russia brought more attention than ever before to the number of illegal inmates in Russia.
In a statement earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed the swap and said that it happened in Abu Dhabi and that Bout was flown back to Russia. Biden talked to Griner on the phone, and US officials said that she would get specialized medical care and counseling.
