His Legal Team Went To D.C. From Texas, Now 'Joe Exotic' Waits In Fort Worth To See If He'll Be Pardoned

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) — It's been less than two weeks since a legal team for Joe Exotic gathered at Meacham Airport to board a plane for Washington, D.C. to ask for a pardon. With President Donald Trump's term ending in less than 24 hours groups can only wait outside the federal prison in Fort Worth to see if the request will be granted.

After a full day of waiting, there is still no word regarding a possible pardon coming his way.

As of 5:30p.m. Tuesday, the team working to free the personality still expect a call any minute announcing his pending freedom.

Private investigator Eric Love sent this video to Michelle Rodriguez on Hawkeye in the Morning at KSCS 96.3 before getting in a limo and heading to the prison.

"I know that as soon as Joe gets out, he wants to get his hair done. That's the number one thing that he wants to get done," said Love, who was confident Joe Exotic would receive a pardon. "He (President Trump) sees that Joe has been targeted. We were able to prove that in the documents we provided to the White House. So I think he can identify with Team Tiger and the Tiger King and I think we're going to get the pardon. I'm 100% sure."

Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as the Tiger King, is serving a 22 year federal sentence after being found guilty in a murder-for-hire plot.

At the time his team made the request Maldonado-Passage's father had just died. Before boarding the plane on January 6 Love told CBS 11 News, "We're asking for President Trump to please put the pen to the paper, to sign the pardon. We'll fly right back home, we'll pick up Joe, and we'll get him returned back to his life and let him attend his father's funeral."

It was in 2019 when the Tiger King was found guilty of more than a dozen counts of animal cruelty and for trying to hire someone to kill big cat-rights activist Carole Baskin.

The true crime documentary "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness" was released in March of 2020, at the height of national stay-at-home orders and catapulted the former Arlington pet store owner into the spotlight.

The series followed Maldonado-Passage's life of as he operated the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma that at the time had nearly 200 big cats.

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