In the spirit of “Avengers: Infinity War,” we’ve got a super-celebrity team-up going on behind the scenes that’s as unlikely as “Mr. Lord” joining forces with “the Pirate Angel” (Star Lord and Thor, for those who haven’t seen it yet). According to online publication Mic, Kim Kardashian, wife of MAGA convert Kanye West, has connected with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to help get a 62-year-old woman out of prison.
The woman, Alice Marie Johnson, has been serving a life sentence in federal prison since October 1996 for a nonviolent drug offense, something Kardashian views as a gross miscarriage of justice. As Vanity Fair frames it, Kushner — whose father once spent a few years in prison — likely sympathizes with her perspective.
Mic reports that “sources with knowledge of the conversations” say that Kardashian and Kushner have spoken on the phone multiple times over the last several months and those talks “have picked up in intensity over the last several days”:
A representative for Kardashian West confirmed to Mic that she has been in communication with the White House and is working to bring Johnson’s case to the president’s desk.
The source with knowledge of the conversations also told Mic that Johnson’s case has been reviewed by White House attorneys.
Kardashian began to get involved in November when she “enlisted a team of lawyers, including her Los Angeles-based attorney Shawn Holley, to advocate for Johnson’s release.”
Mic reports that Kardashian and Holley have both spoken with Johnson in person, and she has expressed her gratitude for the women acting on her behalf. Right now, the women’s best hope is either a presidential pardon or clemency, which President Obama declined offering Johnson.
Vanity Fair notes that Kushner, though an “unlikely” criminal justice reform advocate, has been taking some action recently to promote more lenient sentencing:
Kushner has been an unlikely proponent of criminal-justice reform, putting him at odds with Attorney General Jeff Sessions who has been vocal about his tough-on-crime approach. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have hosted dinners, inviting both Democrats and Republicans to discuss the cause, and they support a bill that would lighten sentences for nonviolent offenses and promote education, drug rehabilitation, and work training inside of prisons.
At one of the dinners he co-hosted, Kushner explained that his interest in criminal-justice reform began when his father, Charles Kushner, was sentenced to two years in prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. The elder Kushner was released in August 2006.
Kardashian likely learned of Johnson through an ACLU campaign to end mass incarceration that features her along with five other prisoners as examples of people suffering unfair sentencing. Johnson has gained some public attention via Skype conversations with companies, including Google, and universities, including NYU and Yale.
Johnson says she first got involved in drug trafficking during a crisis period in her life. As a result of her gambling addiction, she lost her 10-year job at FedEx and got divorced. She then suffered the heartbreaking loss of her son, who died in a motorcycle accident. To make ends meet, she began trafficking drugs. Read more about Johnson here.