Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Kim Kardashian West Lobbied Jared Kushner To Have Trump Pardon A Drug Convict

Kim Kardashian West has spoken several times over the past few months with White House senior advisor/son-in-law Jared Kushner about a possible presidential pardon for a great-grandmother serving a life sentence for money laundering and drug conspiracy, Mic reported Wednesday.

Alice Marie Johnson, a black woman from Mississippi who was sentenced in 1996 to life in prison without the possibility of parole for her role in a drug trafficking ring. It was Johnson’s first offense. West has publicly advocated for her and funded lawyers to advocate for her release.

Mic reported that Johnson’s case has been viewed by White House lawyers, and that conversations between Kushner and Kardashian West have “picked up in intensity over the last several days.” Johnson could likely only be freed from prison via a presidential pardon or commutation. Trump, who has promised to be tough on crime, has extended those powers only a few cases, such as with jailed kosher meat executive Sholom Rubashkin and former Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby.

Kushner and Ivanka Trump his wife Ivanka Trump have advocated for prison sentencing reform since moving to Washington, and Kushner, whose father served 14 months in federal prison, has reportedly been working to pass a bipartisan bill reforming prison sentencing and training programs.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.