Former Major League Baseball All-Star Wander Franco will avoid prison despite being found guilty for a second time on charges of sexual and psychological abuse of a minor. A Dominican Republic judge granted the 25-year-old shortstop a judicial pardon.

The decision overturned Franco’s original June 2025 conviction, in which he received a two-year suspended sentence.

The charges against Franco stemmed from a months-long relationship the ex-MLBer had with a 14-year-old girl beginning in December 2022, when the former top baseball prospect was 21 years old. The court ruled that while Franco was criminally responsible for his actions, he was also the victim of an extortion and blackmail scheme allegedly orchestrated by the minor’s mother.

Prosecutors pushed aggressively for a five-year prison sentence for the Tampa Bay Rays star, but the court ultimately handed its harshest punishment to the minor’s mother. Investigators previously uncovered more than $100,000 in cash during raids on her home tied to Franco.

DOMINICAN APPEALS COURT GRANTS NEW TRIAL FOR CONVICTED MLB STAR WANDER FRANCO IN SEXUAL ABUSE CASE

The mother was sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering and commercial sexual exploitation.

During the proceedings, prosecutors detailed how she allegedly used her daughter as a financial commodity, extracting thousands of dollars from the wealthy MLB player in exchange for consenting to the relationship.

While Franco avoided jail time, his pro baseball career in Major League Baseball is long over. He signed an 11-year, $182 million contract extension with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2021.

Franco has not appeared in an MLB game since August 2023, when allegations involving the minor first exploded on social media.

He was later placed on administrative leave before MLB moved him to its restricted list, freezing both his salary and service time.

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Under U.S. immigration law, the case likely qualifies as a “crime involving moral turpitude.”

Because Franco was not fully exonerated, immigration experts believe it will be nearly impossible for him to secure the work visa necessary to resume his Major League career.

The sentence also gives the Rays significant leverage financially.

With roughly $160 million remaining on Franco’s contract, the organization is under no obligation to pay him if he cannot obtain a visa or report to the team.

The Rays could also attempt to void the remainder of the deal under morality clauses commonly included in professional sports contracts.

Major League Baseball’s independent investigation under its Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy remains ongoing.

MLB previously said it was waiting for the Dominican Republic’s legal process to conclude before issuing formal disciplinary action.

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Longtime reporter Bill Carter claimed President Donald Trump was “personally involved” in having Stephen Colbert’s show canceled based on Trump’s response to the series finale.

“It’s not a good development for the country, obviously,” Carter said on MS Now’s “The Weekend” on Saturday. “Certainly the idea that he throws a man in the dumpster at the end of it indicates that he was personally involved.”

Carter was referring to an AI-generated video posted on Trump’s official X account which featured Trump grabbing Colbert while on his show and throwing him into a large dumpster, dancing to the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” after the act.

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Carter, who wrote the book “The Late Shift” based on former “Late Show” host David Letterman’s feud with “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno, was among several commentators who believed Trump’s ongoing feud with Colbert was a factor in the show’s end.

“The government was pushing to get rid of this man because he was a critic. And, you know, that is so alien to our values that I think most Americans — even people who are kind of neutral about it, maybe not his strong supporters — know this is not something we do. We don’t do that. We don’t shut people up because they criticize us. And I think everybody who has a sense of that realizes this was a bad situation that we are going to have to deal with on an ongoing basis,” Carter said.

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He went on to accuse CBS of capitulating to the Trump administration, claiming that most people no longer believe that the network’s decision to cancel the show was based on “financial purposes.”

“I think CBS, when they capitulated in the lawsuit that Trump filed against ‘60 Minutes,’ was sending a signal that they’re not going to be the independent journalism outfit that they should be. And not just giving up Colbert, but wiping out the time period, they basically said, we’re not even the same business anymore. We’re backing away. We’re giving up on this because maybe it would be too hard to hire somebody who wasn’t going to make jokes about the president,” Carter said.

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Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.

“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” aired its final episode on May 21. CBS announced the show’s cancellation last summer citing financial issues, a claim Colbert frequently denied. However, it was reported at the time that “The Late Show” was losing the network a whopping $40 million per year.

Colbert frequently targeted Trump in the final years of his show. A study from the Media Research Center found that Colbert made 3,639 jokes about President Donald Trump from Jan. 3, 2023, to his show’s end.

Eighty years after being wounded and dying in the Battle of Cherbourg, U.S. 1st Lieutenant Nathan Baskind was laid to rest with his comrades in the Normandy American Cemetery in France.

The Jewish American officer from Pittsburgh, Pa., was considered missing for decades, with his family not knowing what happened to him after he came ashore on Utah Beach on D-Day with the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion.

In the heat of the Battle of Cherbourg on June 23, 1944, Baskind was lost. German records later revealed that he was ambushed and shot before being taken prisoner by German forces and sent to a Luftwaffe field hospital. Later that day, Baskind succumbed to his wounds and was buried in a mass grave with 23 Nazi soldiers.

After World War II, the mass grave containing Baskind’s remains was combined with another one and both were moved to the Marigny (Normandie) German War Graves Cemetery.

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In 1957, the American Grave Registration Service attempted to identify Baskind’s remains, but failed. However, his unit patch, lieutenant’s bars and dog tag were recovered. The Baskind family was not made aware of this because of the lack of a positive definitive identification.

“Nathan Baskind is a unique story, even for us,” Operation Benjamin co-founder and chief historian Shalom Lamm told Fox News Digital.

Operation Benjamin is a nonprofit that works to correct the headstones of Jewish American soldiers who were accidentally buried under a cross instead of a Star of David. Lamm explained that some Jewish American soldiers opted to put other faiths or none at all on their dog tags for various reasons.

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“We were given a hint, sort of a curiosity from a wonderful genealogist who at that time did not work for us, although he does now, and he said he had come across something that he thought was very unusual,” Lamm said. “That he was going through German databases of military cemeteries — people do that — and he found the name Nathan Baskind. And he said, that didn’t make sense to him because Nathan is not a German name.”

Operation Benjamin took the lead and ran with it, eventually discovering who Baskind was. They quickly realized that he had been considered missing for 79 years and that his family did not know what had happened to him. The organization then worked to find Baskind’s next-of-kin, who turned out to be his great-niece, Samantha Baskind, an author and professor.

“When I first heard about Uncle Nate, I was floored. I didn’t actually even believe at the beginning that this was true when I first received an email from Shalom,” she said.

REMAINS OF WWII SOLDIER KILLED NEARLY 80 YEARS AGO IN FRANCE IDENTIFIED, TO BE REBURIED AT NATIONAL CEMETERY

Samantha Baskind told Fox News Digital that the lack of knowledge about her great-uncle’s fate was “a jagged scar that has run through our family.”

In order to get the Jewish American soldier out of a mass grave, Operation Benjamin had to seek permission from multiple countries, including the U.S., Germany and France. When the organization first made its case to Brigadier General Secretary General Dirk Backen at the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund), he initially said he could not help.

Backen explained to Fox News Digital that he knew about Baskind’s case before Operation Benjamin approached him. He had already been asked about moving Baskind’s remains, and he denied the request based on the 1950s documents that showed previous attempts to identify the body had failed. However, Backen reconsidered Operation Benjamin’s request after mulling over the advances in DNA analysis and getting a video of Baskind’s great-niece asking for help.

WWII HERO’S REMAINS FINALLY COMING HOME AFTER 80-YEAR MYSTERY IS SOLVED THROUGH MILITARY DEDICATION

“Operation Benjamin presented a video from Professor Samantha Baskind, the grand-niece of Nathan B. Baskind, and she asked us for help. How can you say no to that?” Backen recalled in a conversation with Fox News Digital.

Once they had permission to open the grave, a team of 17 people, including Germans, Americans, anthropologists and volunteers spent three days in December hand-exhuming the grave. Lamm recalled how the team went through “thousands and thousands of bones” to find one that could match Baskind. One major hint was Baskind’s height.

“[He] was five-foot-five, which made him perfect, of course, to be in a tank. But five-foot-five was short, even for those times,” Lamm said.

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Eventually, the team was able to find human remains that had an extremely high-level DNA match to Baskind.

“We had these tiny samples of bone analyzed in the United States… and we had prior to this gotten DNA samples from the remaining Baskind descendants, and we hit an absolutely spectacular match. We had Nathan Baskind,” Lamm said.

Samantha Baskind said that when Lamm called her to say that the DNA matched, they were both “stunned.” She recalled having an “incredibly emotional conversation” about the discovery. Then, she had to plan a burial for her great-uncle, a man she never knew.

“I had to choose a casket and sign documents about the disposition of his remains, which of course is really emotional for me. And surprising, 80 years after my great-uncle died, I’m the next of kin and I’m planning his burial,” she said.

On June 23, 2024, the 80th anniversary of his death, Baskind was buried at the Normandy American Cemetery with full military honors and in accordance with Jewish law and tradition.

Samantha Baskind said that seeing her great-uncle buried under a Star of David alongside his fellow Americans brought a sense of closure that her family had been missing for decades.

“As Nate’s great-niece, I am so proud that we found him, that I could participate in finding him, and that I can carry his memory forward forever,” she told Fox News Digital.

For Backen, playing a role in helping move Baskind to an American cemetery became about more than correcting a historical error. He told Fox News Digital that his own great-uncle died in almost the same area of Normandy within days of Baskind’s death. He reflected on the possibility that the two soldiers encountered each other in battle and thought about what would have happened if they both survived.

“Would they be able to shake hands?” Backen said. “And all I could imagine was, I wish they would.”

REMEMBERING D-DAY: ‘WE’RE HERE BECAUSE OF WHAT THEY DID’

He also framed the effort to have Baskind reburied as part of the post-World War II relationship between Germany and the U.S.

“It is about showing our neighbors, our friends, that we have chosen a different path now,” Backen said.

Backen, who served alongside American troops in Afghanistan, said the case also reinforced the human cost of war.

“War is a curse. It’s a malaise to everyone, even for the winners… I personally believe — and I’ve been to war in Afghanistan — there’s no glory in war,” he said.

Lamm said that Baskind’s recovery and reburial serve as a reminder of the sacrifices that American servicemembers have made in defense of their country.

“People gave their lives, gave all of their tomorrows, so that we could have better todays, and that is something very, very profound,” he said.

For Samantha Baskind, her great-uncle’s story reflects the often-overlooked role that Jewish Americans have played in defending the U.S. She dismissed “canards related to Jews who don’t fight,” noting that her great-uncle “fought and gave up his life for this country’s freedoms.”

“His story shows us that freedoms are never free,” she said.