President Donald Trump has been on a pardoning spree this week, and the latest beneficiary of his legal largesse is rapper Kentrell Gaulden, better known as NBA Youngboy.
The Louisianan was sentenced to almost two years in prison in 2024 after admitting that he possessed multiple firearms despite a previous conviction for aggravated assault with a firearm back in 2017. As the New York Times reported when the deal with federal prosecutors was struck:
In the first instance, Mr. Gaulden admitted to possessing two guns while filming a music video in Baton Rouge, La., in September 2020. In the second, a semiautomatic pistol was found in the master bedroom of his Utah home during a search, according to the plea agreement.
He faced a maximum prison sentence of 10 years in the Louisiana case and 15 years in the Utah case.
“This has been a long road that involved extensive litigation and ultimately extensive negotiation,” Mr. Gaulden’s lawyers said in a statement on Wednesday night. “Kentrell’s defense team is very happy for Kentrell and we look forward to his many future successes.”
Trump’s pardon wasn’t necessary to spare Gaulden any more time behind bars. Though Gaulden was sentenced to 23 months in federal prison last December, he had already been released to home detention in March of this year, and according to his attorney his term of confinement expired back in April.
“I want to thank President Trump for granting me a pardon and for giving me the opportunity to keep building — as a man, as a father, and as an artist,” Gaulden, whose stage moniker stands for “Never Broke Again,” wrote on his Instagram.
“This moment means a lot.” “It opens the door to a future I’ve worked hard for and I am fully prepared to step into this,” Gaulden added.
Gaulden already got a sweetheart deal from federal prosecutors when Biden was in office, so Trump’s pardon is, at worst, an indication that celebrity justice is a bipartisan affair. Honestly, my biggest gripe about Trump’s pardon spree is that, at least to date, it hasn’t included Patrick “Tate” Adamiak, who’s currently serving a 20-year sentence after being railroaded by Biden’s ATF. As journalist Lee Williams detailed last week:
Former U.S. Navy sailor Patrick “Tate” Adamiak still has 17 years left of his original 20-year criminal sentence, even though a lengthy examination of the evidence used against him raised significant questions about whether he even did anything wrong, much less illegal.
From 2016 to his arrest in 2022, Adamiak bought, sold and traded thousands of gun parts on GunBroker.com and later his own website.
“I never sold a single item that qualifies as a firearm or requires an FFL. I only sold non-regulated gun parts,” Adamiak said this week. “It’s my opinion and my family’s that the ATF realized they messed up after they didn’t come up with a single illegal weapon, so they completely reinterpreted the statutes and implemented new rules to spin the jury and get a conviction. They manufactured crimes to convict me.”
We have shown how items the ATF and federal prosecutors alleged were illegal are still sold legally online: Inert RPGs, toy STENs, open-bolt semi-autos and inert M79s and M203 launchers. Most do not even require any paperwork for the sale.
But the ATF’s falsehoods worked and Adamiak was convicted. How then was he sentenced to serve 20 years in a federal prison?
The answer is simple. Prosecutors and the court relied upon federal sentencing guidelines to determine how long Adamiak would spend behind bars, even though nothing found in his home was actually illegal.
If the president is going to pardon reality TV stars and famous rappers (along with a sheriff convicted of abusing his office to sell badges to campaign donors), then pardoning Adamiak should be a no-brainer. The sailor’s was sentenced to two decades behind bars primarily for the possessing of the two inert RPGs. Though the ATF contended that the grenade launchers were capable of being used, Williams says that the RPGs were inert and non-functioning.
These relics could not shoot, were missing all the internal fire control parts, and were possessed with inert rubber display rockets. This enhancement boosted Adamiak’s sentencing guidelines to life in prison, although the judge sentenced him to two decades behind bars instead, which the court said was due to the “serious nature of Defendant’s convictions and conduct.”
Adamiak never should have been charged in the first place, much less convicted. It’s outrageous that he’s been stuck in prison for the past three years, and it’s heartbreaking to think that he could be kept behind bars until 2042 for selling legal gun parts. Adamiak’s appeals are ongoing, but President Trump can and should reverse this injustice immediately by granting a full pardon and releasing him from his incarceration.
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