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Edward DeBartolo Jr. gets pardon from Trump

Stems from 1998 conviction of failing to report a felony

White House photo Edward DeBartolo Jr., third from left, Cleveland Browns legend Jim Brown, fourth from left, and others listen to President Donald Trump talk Tuesday in the Oval Office in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pardoned former San Francisco 49ers owner Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., born and raised in Mahoning County, for a 1998 conviction for failing to report that a Louisiana governor extorted $400,000 from him for a gambling license.

The Tuesday executive order came after a number of former NFL players including former 49ers Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott and Charles Haley as well as former Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown, all Pro Football Hall of Famers, met with Trump at the White House to urge the president to pardon DeBartolo.

Requests by DeBartolo for pardons from Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were declined.

DeBartolo was born in Youngstown in 1946 and is a 1964 Cardinal Mooney High School graduate. He worked for his father’s Boardman-based Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation, which used to be the largest public real estate business in the country.

He purchased the 49ers in 1977 and the team won five Super Bowls, becoming one of the most successful football franchises in the league’s history.

In 1998, DeBartolo pleaded guilty to failing to report a felony when he paid $400,000 to former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards in exchange for a riverboat gambling license. He never received the license.

He cooperated with law enforcement in the prosecution of Edwards, received a $1 million fine and was put on probation for two years. DeBartolo also was barred from the NFL for a year.

He chose to sell the team to his sister, Denise DeBartolo York, and her husband, John York, in 2000. The team is now run by York’s son, Jed, and went to the Super Bowl earlier this month before losing to the Kansas City Chiefs.

DeBartolo established DeBartolo Holdings, a real estate development and investment company, in 2002 in Tampa, Fla.

Forbes lists him as the 319th richest person in America with a net worth of $2.6 billion. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016.

A couple of months after he was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in Canton, DeBartolo visited Cardinal Mooney as part of the Hometown Hall of Famer program.

He said at the time: “I was more nervous doing this than Canton. Even though I changed my speech in Canton, I thought I had it down pretty well. Coming back here and talking to the kids, being honored at a school (means) so much to me.”

Rice, who played on three of the 49ers’ Super Bowl-winning teams, said: “I take my hat off to Donald Trump for what he did.”

Phillip Bump, national correspondent for The Washington Post who used to live in Howland, wrote the pardon may “be a way to send a signal to a critical part of an important state,” speculating that Trump made the decision to help him win Mahoning County in his re-election bid this year.

“Someone, somewhere, no doubt kept Trump apprised of DeBartolo’s popularity in a region central to U.S. presidential politics,” he wrote.

Bump added: “Locking down Mahoning County, 2 percent of the state’s population, doesn’t hurt Trump’s chances.”

Trump, a Republican, lost Mahoning County, a Democratic stronghold, in 2016 by 3.28 percentage points to Democrat Hillary Clinton. He became the first Republican since 1972 to win Trumbull County, beating Clinton by 6.22 percentage points.

Also Tuesday, Trump commuted the 14-year prison sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, incarcerated since 2012, and pardoned former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Another who got a break from Trump is financier Michael Milken, who served two years in prison in the early 1990s after pleading guilty to violating U.S. securities laws.

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