Muhammad Ali's Ex-Wife Khalilah Responds to Donald Trump's Pardon Consideration

Khalilah Ali, the ex-wife of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, said United States President Donald Trump should use his pardon power on a living person rather than her former husband, who had his conviction for draft evasion overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971.

"There's no necessary need for a pardon," Khalilah Ali told TMZ Sports in an interview released Saturday. "I think [Trump] probably was a fan of Ali and he thought he would say something positive about him. That might be it ... but it's a little too late."

Ron Tweel, an attorney for the three-time lineal heavyweight champion, told Veronica Stracqualursi and MJ Lee of CNN a pardon is "unnecessary."

"This was quite a surprise to everybody this morning when we heard about it," Tweel said Friday. "So this, to our knowledge, came out of the blue, for reasons that I'll let you speculate."

He added: "So, it's not like for weeks or days the administration has reached out to the Ali family. None of that. This was all spontaneous and I think, as a lot of people like to say, impulsive."

Last month, Trump issued a pardon for Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, after a 1913 criminal conviction for transporting a white woman across state lines, which the Ppesident said "many view as a racially motivated injustice," per John Eligon and Michael D. Shear of the New York Times.

Trump, who has been a long-standing critic of NFL players who protest during the national anthem, also said Friday he'd consider pardon recommendations from players.

"I am going to ask all of those people to recommend to me, because that's what they're protesting—people that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system. And I understand that," he told reporters. "They've seen a lot of abuse and they've seen a lot of unfairness."

Khalilah Ali told TMZ the President's pardon consideration for the longtime boxer, who died in 2016, should mean he's "ready to pardon everybody that has [stood up for their rights] in the same manner as Muhammad Ali has."