Kim Kardashian is heading to the White House today to meet with President Trump and senior adviser Jared Kushner, Vanity Fair reports. Their discussion will center around prison reform, but more specifically, Kardashian is seeking a pardon for 62-year-old Alice Johnson, who has been in prison without parole for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense since 1996, according to PEOPLE.
Kushner and Kardashian have been speaking about this issue for months, Mic reports. Although they make an unexpected pairing at first glance, Kushner has met with criminal justice reform advocates in the past and backed prison reform legislation, including the bipartisan Prison Reform and Redemption Act. Kushner’s own father was incarcerated in 2005, which likely spurred his interest in the issue. Kardashian, for her part, learned about Johnson’s story through a Mic video on Twitter in October, and has since been involved in seeking a pardon for her.
This is so unfair… https://t.co/W3lPINbQuy
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) October 26, 2017
Kardashian takes the issue seriously, even though people may assume that as a reality star, she takes nothing seriously. In an interview with Mic, Kardashian explained, “Where I’m at in my life right now, just like, to go and spend my money buying material things just doesn’t satisfy me the way that it used to. To save someone’s life and do that once a year, then that would make [my] heart fuller.”
Vanity Fair also noted Kardashian’s sincerity: this discussion will not be filmed as part of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, nor will her husband Kanye West, whose recent pro-Trump tweets have made him a subject of notoriety, be in attendance.
It’s hard to say whether or not Trump will agree with Kardashian’s plea: early in the Trump administration, attorney general Jeff Sessions reversed Obama-era policies that were more lenient on low-level crimes, according to the New York Times. However, Trump has been known to grant pardons on advice from celebrities, such as when he pardoned heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson after talks with Sylvester Stallone, CNN reported.
But Kardashian seems determined. She told Mic, “I would explain to him [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,” she said.