Joe Exotic’s Lawyer ‘Confident’ That Trump Will Pardon Tiger King Star: ‘It is Going to Happen’

The legal team for Tiger King’s Joe Exotic is confident: President Donald Trump will grant him a pardon.

In a video for TMZ, Eric Love — the head of the Exotic legal team — discussed receiving “multiple phone calls” from Washington on a potential pardon. Love described the team as being “so confident” about its chances.

“We feel that it is going to happen,” Love said. “We hope, very, very soon.”

He added, “The pardon’s gonna happen.”

Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, is currently serving a 22-year sentence at a federal prison in Texas following his conviction on various charges of animal abuse, as well as a murder-for-hire plot to kill his Tiger King rival, Carole Baskin. He formally appealed for the pardon in September.

“Allow me to make you proud, to make America proud, to make the world proud,” Exotic wrote, in a direct appeal to Trump. “Be my hero please.”

Trump has already granted a number of highly controversial pardons and commutations during his presidency, including those for his longtime associate Roger Stone, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Watch above, via TMZ.