Utah News Dispatch
Trump administration pardons rapper NBA YoungBoy convicted in Utah for gun-related charges
Kentrell Gaulden, known as NBA YoungBoy, smiles as he is led out of the courtroom by his defense attorney Zack Findling following a hearing in 1st District Court, Thursday, May 9, 2024, in Logan, Utah. (Pool photo by Eli Lucero/Herald Journal)
Amid a week of high-profile pardons, the Trump administration pardoned Kentrell Gaulden, widely known for his stage name NBA YoungBoy, on Wednesday, months after his conviction in Utah on gun-related charges.
The 25-year-old rapper’s case had been transferred from Louisiana to Utah, where he has lived in recent years. In an agreement resolving two sets of federal charges, he was sentenced to almost two years in prison. After being released from home confinement, he began serving 60 months of probation and paid a $200,000 fine after pleading guilty to possessing a firearm while being a convicted felon.
“I want to thank President Trump for granting me a pardon and giving me the opportunity to keep building — as a man, as a father, and as an artist,” Gaulden said in a social media post. “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.”
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
White House Pardon Czar Alice Marie Johnson told Fox & Friends that while reviewing Gaulden’s case, she took into consideration his age, his circumstances growing up in an impoverished neighborhood, and the conditions of his case’s investigation.
“Most of those were gun charges without the guns being discharged,” she said, also adding that the investigation emerged from a set where Gaulden was filming a video with a prop.
“The officers who in this particular case, they came at him as though he was a terrorist, and he was on the set filming for a video. They gave him a gun charge for that,” Johnson said. “And we found that the officers who did this were all investigated and fired.”
Three Baton Rouge officers were fired and one resigned in September 2024 in the middle of a criminal investigation “for allegedly covering up evidence of one officer beating a detainee during a strip search in 2020,” in a confrontation after Gaulden was arrested, according to The Advocate.
Johnson announced that 26 individuals had been granted clemency on Wednesday.
“Each one represents a story of redemption, rehabilitation, and resilience,” she wrote on X. “Their second chance is a second shot at life.”
Prior to that firearm sentence, Gaulden was booked into the Cache County Jail in April 2024 and charged with identity fraud, forgery, prescription fraud and possession of a firearm as a convicted felon after “being identified as a suspect in a large scale prescription fraud ring,” according to court documents.
Gaulden was also convicted of aggravated assault with a firearm, a felony, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 2016 and was also arrested in Georgia for aggravated assault and kidnapping in 2018, according to court files.
In 2021, the FBI also arrested Gaulden for possessing a weapon as a convicted felon. At that time, his federal charges were still pending in a Louisiana court and he was on federal pre-trial supervision.
