Kodak Black is asking Donald Trump to help him get out of prison. Lawyers for the Florida rapper sent a petition to Trump this week, in hopes of getting his sentence commuted.
The 23-year-old recording artists took a plea deal and was sentenced to 46 months in prison on federal weapons possession charges last year. He was originally locked up in Miami but was “erroneously” transferred to Kentucky’s Big Sandy maximum-security federal prison. Kodak’s lawyers argue that he deserves to be housed in lower security facility, TMZ reports.
The petition reportedly suggests that Kodak received a harsher sentence compared to the average sentence (18 months) for the same conviction. Bradford Cohen, one of Kodak’s lawyers, has ties to Trump as a former contestant on the President’s cancelled reality show, The Apprentice.
“This week we filed a commutation of sentence with the President of the United States,” Cohen wrote on Instagram on Thursday (Sept. 24). “The fact that a non-violent paperwork offense by an individual who is not a convicted felon, [received] 46 months and was sent to a max security prison, 1100 miles from his [home] who has been in the bix on 23 hour lock down since September 2019, with no visitation, no programs and no phone privileges is not justice. Where BOP [Bureau of Prisons] made a significant error in his designation paperwork.
“The treatment coupled with the actual crime calls for true justice to intervene and say enough is enough. Individuals similarly situated received significantly less time. We are asking for what is fair.”
Kodak’s legal issues have been mounting since he was arrested for allegedly raping an 18-year-old high school student in his South Carolina hotel room in 2016. In 2019, prosecutors charged him with first-degree criminal conduct in connection with the rape case. Earlier this year, Kodak pleaded guilty to second-degree criminal possessions of a firearm after being found with a weapon at the Canadian-American border. He received a 12-month sentence to run concurrently with his federal prison sentence.
The “ZeZe” rapper, who legally changed his name to Bill Kapri and identifies as a Hebrew Israelite, is suing the Federal Bureau of Prisons for alleged torture and abuse. Kodak claims that prison guards jumped him when he first got to Big Sandy, routinely humiliated and assaulted him more than once, and blocked him from visits with a rabbi despite other prisoners receiving time with clergy members. In another alleged incident, Kodak claims that he was forced to wear an open-back hospital gown for more than six hours while being put into a four-point restraint until he urinated and defecated on himself while guards laughed and cracked jokes.