Millionaire businessman Peter Karmanos says he's pushing to free Kwame Kilpatrick from prison, saying the convicted ex-Detroit mayor got a raw deal from the feds, and that President Donald Trump is seriously considering a request to pardon him.

"What you guys witnessed was a modern day lynching, that’s what we saw," Karmanos said of Kilpatrick's conviction on Charlie Le Duff's "No BS News Hour" podcast Sunday. Karmanos noted it was he who personally delivered Kilpatrick's clemency request to Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, last year.

"I’m going to continue to push. It's not right," said Karmanos, adding that he "absolutely" believes that Trump is seriously considering honoring Kilpatrick's request for clemency.

"I do know that If Trump gave him clemency before the election, where do you think he’d help Trump’s campaign at? You don’t think (Kilpatrick) would go to the black community," Karmanos said, adding he believes Kilpatrick "had done absolutely zero" wrong.

And he scoffed at Kilpatrick's historic public corruption sentence.

"Twenty-eight years, are you kidding me?" said Karmanos, who described Kilpatrick as a "good politician" and "smart businessman," and stressed that he never shook him down, as was alleged by several contractors during Kilpatrick's corruption trial.

"He never asked for a cent ... Everything was on the up and up," said Karmanos, 76, cofounder of Detroit-based Compuware, once the largest computer technology company in the state. He also founded the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, named after his first wife.

Over the years, Karmanos has been a loyal friend, advocate and supporter of Kilpatrick.

According to campaign finance records, Karmanos gave $100,000 to Kwame Kilpatrick’s Generations political action committee in 2005. And, he donated a total of $4,000 to Kilpatrick's mom — former U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Detroit — when she served in Congress.

In 2009, a year after Kilpatrick resigned from office amid a text message scandal exposed by the Free Press, Karmanos also gave Kilpatrick a job: He hired him as a salesman for Compuware subsidiary Covisint in Dallas, where Kilpatrick moved with his family.

Campaign finance records show, however, that most of Karmanos' donations go to Republican organizations and candidates, including $2,700 to Trump in 2016 and $500,000 to John Kasich’s presidential campaign’s super PAC (New Day for America).

The U.S. Attorney's Office has long argued that Kilpatrick was convicted fair and square, and it has successfully fought all his appeals.

“Mr. Kilpatrick received a fair and just sentence that reflected the seriousness of his crimes and the devastating impact they had on our community," U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider said in an email to the Free Press on Monday.

As for Kilpatrick's pardon request, Schneider said:

"Ordinarily, in a pardon or commutation request, the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the Justice Department consults with the U.S. Attorney about the merits of the request. We are willing to provide any assistance to the Pardon Attorney that may be needed to explain our position and justify the appropriateness of the sentence.”

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Kilpatrick resigned from office in 2008 after the Free Press published text messages that showed Kilpatrick lied about an affair with his chief of staff and gave misleading testimony about the firing of a police officer during a whistleblower trial.

The Free Press investigation also triggered criminal charges against Kilpatrick, who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, served 99 days in jail and was ordered to pay up to $1 million in restitution.

Kilpatrick's federal corruption trial would come five years later and ended with him getting convicted by a jury on 24 of 30 counts, for crimes including racketeering, bribery, extortion and fraud. He was convicted of running a criminal enterprise out of the mayor’s office that included shaking down contractors in pay-to-play schemes and steering work to his contractor friend, Bobby Ferguson, who shared his ill-gotten gains with Kilpatrick.

Kilpatrick has been fighting for his freedom ever since, though all of his appeals have failed.

Free Press reporter Kathleen Gray contributed to this report.

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com