President Trump commutes sentence of Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover

President Donald Trump has commuted the federal sentence of former Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover, as part of a series of pardons and clemencies issued this week.

Hoover, 74, was convicted of federal charges in 1997 and sentenced to six life terms. He was already serving a 200-year sentence on state charges in Illinois for the 1973 murder of 19-year-old drug dealer William “Pooky” Young. Federal prosecutors accused Hoover of leading a criminal enterprise while in prison as he continued to oversee the Gangster Disciples, a Chicago gang.

President Trump ordered the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to release Hoover “immediately” and consider his sentence served “with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions,” reports the Chicago Tribune. Though Trump’s commutation will end Hoover’s federal sentence, he will still have to serve the remainder of his 200-year state sentence.

The push to grant Hoover clemency has been decades in the making. Previous attempts for presidential pardons had been rejected.

Hoover’s commutation is credited to Alice Johnson, President Trump’s pardon czar. His son, Larry Hoover Jr., posted a picture of Johnson holding the presidential order signed by Trump. Johnson served more than 20 years in prison for drug trafficking and was notably pardoned by Trump in 2018.

Political strategist Ameshia Cross slammed Trump’s commutation of Hoover’s sentencing, telling theGrio, “This further proves not only Donald Trump’s gangster, but his alignment with gangsters.”

Noting President Trump’s disparaging comments about Chicago and its crime rate over the years, Cross believes he is symbolically casting yet another shadow on Chicago by commuting the sentence for Hoover, who she described as having a “very negative and very long-standing abusive history in the city.”

“This is a guy who’s violent; the act of ordering killings, the act of actually funneling drugs into communities across the south and west sides and decimating those communities and those families,” said Cross. “That is a multi-generational effect.”