Joe Exotic looks up to Trump because 'you can become the President of the United States as a felon'

Joe Exotic finds hope in Donald Trump.

The Tiger King, whose real name is Joseph Allen Maldonado, tells Entertainment Weekly that he doesn't just look to Trump for a pardon, he looks up to the newly-inaugurated president. "I could take my time served if somebody thinks I've done something wrong," Maldonado says, "and I can move on with my life being a felon, because he's the president as a felon. And if you can become the President of the United States as a felon, hey, I can finish off my life."

Maldonado explains, "I've got two types of cancer going on and I don't even know how much time I have left. But I can finish that happily as a felon. Just give me time served. I don't need a damn pardon. Just commute my sentence to time served, not because of who I am, but because it's the right thing to do."

Maldonado was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2020 on 17 counts of wildlife crimes and two counts of attempted murder-for-hire. The former wildlife park operator's alleged murder plot and longtime rivalry with fellow big cat keeper Carole Baskin is documented in Netflix's three-part true crime series Tiger King, first released just two months after Maldonado's sentencing.

He has maintained his innocence since his incarceration, and continually advocated for his pardoning or for a commutation of his sentence, first from former President Joe Biden and now from Trump. Maldonado says he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2021.

Trump was convicted last May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his 2016 presidential election campaign. A judge upheld those convictions earlier this month, but ruled that he will face no legal penalties.

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"Why am I in prison?" Maldonado asks. "I plead to President Trump. I'm not begging. I'm asking that he take five minutes and look at the evidence that's on my website."

Maldonado has been publishing claims related to his conviction and the allegations made against him by both Baskin and the U.S. Attorney's office that prosecuted his case in Oklahoma on both his personal website and Instagram. He claims that he's "a political prisoner for the Big Cat Safety Act," a federal law enacted in Dec. 2022 that prohibits the private ownership and exhibition of big cats.

"I lost seven years of my life so you can't pet a baby tiger," Maldonado says.

Maldonado claims he's suffered abuse while being held at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Tex, and witnessed violations of several institutional policies, including the sale of drugs. For this reason, he says, "I want to testify in front of Congress, because I've lived it for seven years."

"I'm not scared of being a voice for the other 165,000 people stuck in this system," Maldonado continues. "It wasn't only weaponized against President Trump, the DOJ. The DOJ has been weaponized against a lot of us. We just don't have $60 million to hire lawyers."