'Kim has been my war angel': The most unlikely story of how Kim Kardashian and Jared Kushner are teaming up to nudge Trump to free a 62-year-old grandmother from prison
- Kim Kardashian West pressed Jared Kushner last week to ask President Donald Trump to grant clemency to Alice Johnson, sources familiar with the conversation told Business Insider.
- Johnson, a 62-year-old grandmother, is serving a life sentence without parole for nonviolent drug offenses. Kardashian took an interest in her case late last year.
- Johnson told Business Insider that she is aware the Trump administration is involved in her case.
- She said she has been "walking around in a daze" in recent days, hopeful that Trump will make an announcement soon.
Last week, Kim Kardashian West spoke by phone with President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and made an unusual request: help free a 62-year-old grandmother from prison.
Kardashian pressed Kushner to bring the issue directly to Trump, two sources with direct knowledge of the call told Business Insider. Their hope is that Trump will grant clemency to Alice Marie Johnson, possibly in the form of a sentence commutation.
Mic and TMZ reported this week that Kardashian and Kushner had been working together on Johnson's case.
Johnson is serving a life sentence without parole for first-time, nonviolent drug offenses she committed in the early 1990s. Her case has received nationwide media attention for years, but captured the sympathy of Kardashian in October 2017.
Johnson spoke exclusively with Business Insider and said she has been informed by her attorneys that the Trump administration is weighing her case. She added that she has been "walking around in a daze" in recent days, and is "very optimistic" she will be granted clemency.
"I don't even know myself what emotions I will really feel when this happens," Johnson said in an email sent from the Aliceville correctional facility in Alabama. "My faith in God is still very strong. I have already experienced the miraculous when Kim Kardashian West saw my story and came to my rescue by hiring attorneys to help me gain my freedom."
She said she and her family have already endured the devastation of being denied clemency by former President Barack Obama three times in a years-long cycle of raised hopes followed by crushing blows.
"My family has been broken beyond what anyone can imagine," Johnson said. "A commutation would mean wholeness for me and my family again."
For years, Johnson believed Obama was her last hope of leaving prison alive. Now, she's hoping Trump will do what Obama wouldn't.
'Kim has been my war angel'
Johnson said it took a miracle for her case to grab the attention of the Trump administration - and that miracle came in the shape of Kardashian.
"She has embraced my cause and taken to heart my plight," Johnson said. "Kim has been my war angel, and I'll never forget what she is doing for me."
Though Johnson never seemed to spark enough interest from the Obama administration, she has long been featured in media stories about overzealous drug sentencing. In the waning days of Obama's signature clemency initiative, a parade of legal experts, lawmakers, prison staff, and criminal-justice reform advocates flaunted Johnson as the perfect candidate for clemency.
She has been touted not only as an extreme example of the type of harsh, mandatory-minimum sentencing that erupted in the 1980s and 90s, but the embodiment of a reformed and repentant prisoner with the skills and support to live a productive life.
"We often say that people were given clemency, but the truth is that they earned it. And that's very much true of Alice," Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas who has closely followed Johnson's case, told Business Insider. "She obviously saw herself as a work in progress while she was in prison, and sought to be a positive influence on other people, which is the most we can hope for for anyone in or out of prison."
Johnson is an ordained minister, a playwright, a mentor, counselor, tutor, and companion for suicidal inmates, and didn't commit a single disciplinary infraction during two decades in prison, according to 2016 letters from staff at the Aliceville correctional facility in Alabama, who have supported her clemency bid.
"She's just one of those people that there's something remarkable about her. It's unforgettable," said Amy Povah, who has worked on Johnson's case since 2014 for Clemency for All Nonviolent Drug Offenders (CAN-DO), a nonprofit that advocates for clemency and assists prisoners with their petitions. "She's like this ray of sunshine."
Povah herself received a commutation from former President Bill Clinton in 2000, and upon learning of Johnson's case, immediately placed her at the top of the foundation's list of 25 women who most deserve clemency.
"She has expressed incredible remorse - that this was the worst thing she ever did. And we shouldn't be defined by the worst decision that we made," Povah said. "She has 21 years of evidence that she deserves a second chance and she deserves mercy. Enough is enough."
How a viral video put Johnson in position to be free
A video published by Mic featured an interview with Johnson herself via a Skype video call - a rare privilege not often granted to federal prisoners.
Unlike with previous media coverage, this time more than 7 million people viewed Johnson's story on Facebook and Twitter. And that's when it caught Kardashian's eye.
"This is so unfair…" Kardashian tweeted after she saw the four-minute video. Weeks later, she retained Shawn Holley, a criminal defense and celebrity lawyer, to work on Johnson's case and that of another woman currently serving a life sentence, Cyntoia Brown.
But it wasn't until last Wednesday that Kardashian achieved major momentum on Johnson's case. When her husband, Kanye West, reemerged on Twitter and sparked a massive uproar, it did more than just enrage some fans and delight conservatives - it grabbed the attention of Trump himself.
"You don't have to agree with trump but the mob can't make me not love him," West tweeted. Trump later replied, "Thank you Kanye, very cool!"
Though it's unclear what role West's resurfacing had in Johnson's case, the controversy may have presented Kardashian with the opportune moment to push it.
Johnson's supporters, including Povah and Osler, have also speculated that her case may have personally appealed to Kushner, who has advocated both within the White House and in public for criminal justice reforms despite the tough-on-crime, lock-'em-up rhetoric from much of the Trump administration.
Kushner even published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal last week, urging Congress to make it easier for released inmates to integrate back into society.
"President Trump promised to fight for the forgotten men and women of this country - and that includes those in prison," he wrote.
'I had to pick myself back up'
Johnson's life began to unravel around 1990.
Within the span of just a few years, Johnson faced not only a gambling addiction and the loss of her job while she struggled to raise five children - she also endured a divorce, a bankruptcy, a home foreclosure, and the death of her youngest son in a motorcycle accident.
She turned to a drug-dealing and money-laundering operation. It was the worst decision she ever made, she said.
Johnson said her role in the conspiracy was as a telephone mule. She passed along messages by phone as an intermediary so that the people who were selling and distributing the cocaine weren't contacting one another directly. She said she never personally touched or sold the drugs.
When authorities dismantled the operation and brought drug conspiracy charges against its participants, prosecutors labeled Johnson one of the conspiracy's leaders, even though Johnson viewed herself as a relatively low-ranking member of the scheme.
"Conspiracy meant that I became responsible for the acts of everyone involved in my case and paid the lion's share of the debt to society … a life sentence," she said. In retrospect, Johnson says she is deeply sorry for the crimes she committed. But she believes her sentence was also fundamentally unjust.
The next blow came in late 2016, two weeks before Obama was set to leave office. Johnson had been certain that Obama's 2014 Clemency Initiative - which prioritized people convicted of nonviolent offenses who demonstrated exemplary conduct in prison - would see her as the perfect candidate for a commutation.
But she was denied clemency on January 6, 2016, and never told why. According to the Office of the Pardon Attorney, presidents rarely explain their denials, and documents related to presidential decision-making are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
Several former Obama administration officials who led the clemency program, including former deputy attorney general Sally Yates, former White House Counsel Neil Eggleston, and former Pardon Attorney Robert Zauzmer, did not respond to Business Insider's queries on why Johnson was denied.
"It's hard to find closure for the death of a dream when you don't have answers for the cause of death," Johnson said. "I did grieve, but knew that giving up was not an option, so I had to pick myself back up and get back in the ring and fight for my life."