Kim Kardashian plans to push Donald Trump to give a first-time drug offender and great-grandmother serving a life sentence in prison a life-changing birthday present during a meeting at the White House today.
Lawyer Brittany Barnett tells DailyMail.com that Kardashian will ask President Trump to grant Alice Johnson clemency in an anticipated meeting this afternoon.
‘No greater gift than freedom on her birthday,’ Barnett said of the 63-year-old petitioning for a pardon.
Kardashian has a confirmed meeting with Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and the president’s son-in-law. Barnett said it was her ‘hope’ that Kardashian would also have an opportunity to make Johnson’s case to the president.
‘The message to the president is that Alice Johnson, the 21 years she has been in prison, represents a punishment that more than pays her debt to society and that to keep her prison the rest of her life is morally and economically unjustifiable,’ Barnett stated.
Kim Kardashian plans to push Donald Trump to give a first-time drug offender and great-grandmother serving a life sentence in prison a life-changing birthday present during a meeting at the White House today
Kardashian has a confirmed meeting with Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and the president’s son-in-law. She is seen arriving this afternoon
Kardashian, 37, is expected to sit down with Kushner and then meet with the president to discuss a pardon for Johnson, who will otherwise spend the rest of her life in prison for a first-time drug offense.
Johnson’s life sentence did not come with the opportunity for parole.
Her conviction and incarceration caught the eye of Kardashian on Twitter earlier this year.
Kardashian said in a tweet this morning that confirmed reports that she was headed to the White House: ‘Happy Birthday Alice Marie Johnson. Today is for you.’
The White House declined to comment on reports that Kim would meet with the president on Wednesday afternoon, and the president, who’s an avid tweeter himself, has not mentioned a meeting.
‘She is expected to be here at the White House. I can confirm she’ll be here,’ press secretary Sarah Sanders told DailyMail.com during a news conference. ‘We’ll keep you posted on any meetings that take place, what those look like.’
Kim Kardashian is meeting with Donald Trump at the White House today to discuss prison reform and pardoning a first-time drug offender
A great-grandmother, 62-year-old Johnson is serving a life sentence without parole as a first-time drug offender
Kardashian said in a tweet on Wednesday that confirmed reports that she was headed to the White House: ‘Happy Birthday Alice Marie Johnson. Today is for you’
Kardashian will reportedly eat a meal with Jared and Ivanka before meeting with President Trump, who she is pictured with in 2010 at the celebration of Perfumania
Kardashian has been campaigning for Johnson’s release and has been involved in months of talks with the White House about a pardon.
She reached out to first daughter Ivanka Trump and established a connection with Kushner, Vanity Fair reports, and will meet with both today in Washington.
Neither her husband Kanye West, who is a Trump supporter, nor other members of the Kardashian family will be at the meeting that is expected to take place at the White House on Wednesday afternoon.
Kardashian has said she would like to ‘explain to [President Trump] that, just like everybody else, we can make choices in our lives that we’re not proud of and that we don’t think through all the way’ as she campaigns for a pardon for Johnson and prison reform.
Kushner has pulled from his father Charles’ own year-long incarceration in 2005 – for tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering – in his prison reform agenda.
He helped to engineer the First Step Act, created to offer job training and drug-treatment programs, as well as time off their sentences, as an incentive for inmates with good behavorr.
The House-passed bill that is before the U.S. Senate would allow non-violent offenders to spend the end of their sentences in halfway homes.
Kushner at a White House event this month said, ‘The single biggest thing we want to do is really define what the purpose of a prison is. Is the purpose to punish, is the purpose to warehouse, or is the purpose to rehabilitate?’
Kanye won’t be tagging along with his wife when she goes to speak with President Trump today. He’s seen here with Donald Trump at Trump Tower in 2016
Just last week on Thursday the president posthumously pardoned Jack Johnson – the legendary black boxer who was convicted of violating the Mann Act in 1913 – at the request of actor and support Sylvester Stallone.
The senior White House adviser acknowledged that the legislation is indeed a first step, as the act’s name suggests.
‘If we can start showing that we can make the prisons more purposeful and more effective at lowering the recidivism rate over time, that may help the people who are trying to make the argument for sentencing reform,’ Kushner said at the White House summit on prison reform.
Trump’s administration has a mixed record when it comes to reforms, however, after the president ran on a platform of ‘law and order’ as a candidate.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded an Obama-era memo that provided leniency for drug offenders in states that have passed rules legalizing marijuana as one of his first acts atop the Department of Justice.
Trump himself has signed several politically-charged pardons for former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arapaio and other supporters.
Just last week on Thursday the president posthumously pardoned Jack Johnson – the legendary black boxer who was convicted of violating the Mann Act in 1913 – at the request of actor and support Sylvester Stallone.
The act made it illegal to transport women across state lines for the purpose of prostitution. It was often used, though, as a punishment for interracial relationships.
Prison reform has been placed high on Kushner’s agenda since his own father was incarcerated in 2005 for a slew of crimes and only served a year