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Very Real

Kim Kardashian To Work With Jared Kushner To Free 62-Year-Old Woman Serving Life For Nonviolent Offense

Alice Marie Johnson, a great grandmother, was sentenced to life without parole for a nonviolent offense. Here’s what Kim Kardashian is doing about it.

By Sharon Lynn Pruitt

Kim Kardashian is using her considerable platform for good.

Alice Marie Johnson, a 62-year-old incarcerated great grandmother, has thus far served more than 20 years of the life sentence she was dealt in 1997 for nonviolent offenses. If Kardashian has her way, Johnson won’t have to spend much more time behind bars.

The reality TV star has teamed up with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump and is fighting to get Johnson a presidential pardon, the Huffington Post reports. Johnson was arrested in 1993 and in 1997 convicted of drug conspiracy and money laundering, along with 15 others involved in the same operation, according to Mic. Even though these nonviolent offenses were Johnson’s first brushes with the law, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after 10 of her former cohorts agreed to testify against her in exchange for reduced or even dropped charges.

Johnson got involved in the drug dealing operation after a series of tragedies in her life that included divorce, filing for bankruptcy, and the death of one of her children. She says she never personally made drug deals or sold drugs, but instead acted as a go-between — or, a “telephone mule,” she explained — for distributors and sellers, Mic reports.

Kardashian first commented on Johnson’s case last year, after sharing Mic’s video on the case on social media.

Kardashian has since gotten involved with the case herself, with the help of a team of lawyers that include her personal attorney Shawn Holley, the New York Daily News reported in November. Kardashian has had multiple phone conversations over the last several months with Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner on the subject, according to Mic. The same source reports that Johnson’s case has been reviewed by White House attorneys. A representative for Kardashian confirmed as much to Mic, reporting that Kardashian has, in fact, been in contact with the White House and is working to bring Johnson’s case to the president’s desk for review.

Johnson wrote a letter to Kardashian last year thanking the celebrity for all of her help, TMZ reports.

“There are no words to express my deep and heartfelt gratitude,” she wrote. “Ms. Kardashian you are literally helping to save my life and restore me to my family. I was drowning and you have thrown me a life jacket and given me hope.”

Kardashian has also been an advocate in the case of Cyntoia Brown, a sex trafficking victim currently serving a life sentence after being convicted of murder in 2004 at the age of 16, after shooting and killing a 43-year-old man who had solicited her for sex.

(Photo: Kim Kardashian West is seen leaving Jimmy Kimmel Live on November 02, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. By PG/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images/Getty Images)