US President Donald Trump on Thursday pardoned five former National Football League (NFL) players who had been convicted of various federal offenses.
According to the White House, those pardoned include Joe Klecko, Nate Newton, Jamal Lewis, Travis Henry and the late Billy Cannon, who previously faced charges including perjury and drug-related offenses, according to court records.
The announcement was made by presidential pardon adviser Alice Marie Johnson, who noted that the decision is part of the president’s commitment to offering “second chances” to people who have already served their sentences and rebuilt their lives.
“As football reminds us, excellence is based on determination, grace and the courage to rise again. So is our nation,” Johnson wrote on social media.
Klecko, a former New York Jets star, pleaded guilty to perjury in 1993 after lying to a federal grand jury investigating insurance fraud.
Newton pleaded guilty to a federal drug trafficking charge in 2002 after authorities found $10,000 in his pickup truck, as well as 79 kilograms of marijuana in an accompanying car driven by another man.
Lewis, a former Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns player, pleaded guilty in a drug case in which he used a cell phone to try to broker a deal shortly after being selected fifth overall in the 2000 NFL Draft.
Henry, for his part, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic cocaine in 2009 for financing a drug trafficking network that transported the drug between Colorado and Montana.
And Cannon, who played for the Houston Oilers, Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs, admitted to counterfeiting money in the mid-1980s after a series of bad investments and debts left him bankrupt. He passed away in 2018.
Trump already pardoned former New York Mets baseball player Darryl Strawberry in November for tax evasion and drug charges.
On the first day of his second term, January 20, 2025, Trump pardoned all those convicted or awaiting sentencing for the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, including those charged with sedition.
In 2025, he also carried out other controversial pardons such as that of former Honduran PresidentJuan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence for drug trafficking.
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