Phil Mickelson says he had nothing to do with Trump’s clemency for convicted gambler

Mickelson, nonetheless, is disputing Trump’s declare of assist. On Thursday, his legal professional told ESPN’s Bob Harig that Mickelson “had nothing to do with this” and had not written or telephoned anybody on Walters’s behalf.

“The press release referencing Phil Mickelson is erroneous,” Glenn Cohen, Mickelson’s legal professional, instructed Harig. “The reason we are upset is because it’s untrue.”

There’s a bit of backstory to unpack right here. In charging Walters and Thomas Davis, the previous chairman of Dean Foods, over an insider-trading scheme in 2016, federal prosecutors alleged that Walters used the misbegotten details about the corporate’s funds to assist enrich Mickelson, a longtime good friend who owed Walters cash for sports-betting losses. Prosecutors stated Mickelson purchased shares of Dean Foods in the future after Walters instructed him the corporate deliberate to spin off one in every of its subsidiaries, and a couple of week later Dean Food’s inventory worth had jumped 40 p.c, in accordance to the criticism.

Prosecutors didn’t cost Mickelson with a criminal offense nor accuse him of 1. However, they named him as a “relief defendant,” which means the Securities and Exchange Commission wished him to return his $931,000 in revenue from the inventory trades, which he did, saying he was “disappointed to have been a part of that whole thing.”

Before Walters’s sentencing in 2017, greater than 100 of his associates submitted letters of assist to U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel, amongst them tennis legend Andre Agassi, former U.S. Senate majority chief Harry M. Reid {and professional} golfers together with Jacobsen and Jim Colbert, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on the time. Castel was unswayed, sentencing Walters to 5 years in federal jail. (Walters was launched from a minimum-security jail in May to serve out the rest of his incarceration at residence due to the coronavirus pandemic.)

Walters has repaid greater than $44 million in fines, forfeitures and restitution, Trump’s announcement stated.