New York Post

TRUMP MEETS RUMP

- By MARISA SCHULTZ and NIKKI SCHWAB nschwab@nypost.com

Reality star meets reality president in the Oval Office yesterday when Kim Kardashian lobbied P resident Trump to pardon a 63-year-old first-time drug offender.

It was the commander and cheeks.

Kim Kardashian strutted into the Oval Office on Wednesday for a sit-down with President Trump to discuss criminal-justice issues — including an imprisoned drug offender she discovered on Twitter.

The reality-TV queen donned high heels and an all-black ensemble for the meeting with the former reality-TV king.

Kardashian was spotted entering the West Wing at about 4:45 p.m. and leaving about an hour later.

She spoke with Trump and his advisers, including Jared Kushner, whom she met through Ivanka Trump, according to sources.

The mother-of-three requested the White House meeting after learning about the plight of Alice Marie Johnson on social media late last year.

“This is so unfair,” Kardashian tweeted in October 2017, along with a link to an interview Johnson, now 63, did on Mic.com.

Sources told The Post that Kardashian argued that Johnson — a great-grandmothe­r who never actually sold any drugs — had paid her debt to society after 21 years behind bars and deserves clemency.

The meeting went well, sources said, and now the decision is in Trump’s hands.

After the parley, Kardashian headed to Ivanka’s and Jared’s DC home for a private dinner.

It was to be a continuati­on of the White House meeting, since Kushner is a passionate advocate for criminal-justice reform after living through his father’s imprisonme­nt.

“Happy Birthday Alice Marie Johnson. Today is for you,” Kardashian tweeted before arriving in Washington.

She later released a statement thanking Trump and saying, “It is our hope that the President will grant clemency to Ms. Alice Marie Johnson . . . We are optimistic about Ms. Johnson’s future and hopeful that she — and so many like her — will get a second chance at life.”

Kardashian was accompanie­d by her personal attorney, Shawn Holley, who is helping Johnson.

Johnson, a first-time nonviolent drug offender, was sentenced to life in prison in 1997 after confessing that she had acted as an intermedia­ry for pushers.

While then-President Barack Obama granted 1,927 clemency requests before leaving office, Johnson’s was not one of them.

“This main thing is we want Ms. Alice free and we want to raise awareness to the broader issue that people are sentenced to die in prison,” said Brittany Barnett, member of her legal team.

“Ms. Alice is serving the same amount of time as the Unabomber. People need to feel that.”

Kardashian was able to build a relationsh­ip with Johnson thanks to her friendship with Jessica Jackson Sloan, who directs the Dream Corps’ #cut50 initiative.

Sloan was at the White House earlier this month working with Kushner and Trump on criminalju­stice reform. The president is sincerely interested in getting something done on the matter, she said. a

“Kim is looking at this from a human-rights and human-dignity perspectiv­e,” Barnett said. “It went like two friends. One friend is trying to save the life of the other.”

Kardashian helped fund and assemble a legal team for Johnson.

After the meeting, Trump tweeted a photo of himself and Kardashian at the Resolute Desk, with him seated and her standing to his right.

“Great meeting with @KimKardash­ian today, talked about prison reform and sentencing,” he wrote. It was later retweeted by the official @POTUS account.

The White House meeting was a culminatio­n of weeks of planning that started with Kardashian reaching out to Ivanka, who then put her in touch with Kushner.

It came just weeks after Kardashian’s husband, Kanye West, came under fire for publicly voicing his support for Trump.

While the rapper is a fan of the president, it’s unclear if his wife feels the same way.

Trump has ridiculed Kardashian in the past — and even bodyshamed her while speaking on the “Howard Stern Show.”

“Does she have a good body? No. Does she have a fat ass? Absolutely,” Trump said during a 2013 interview.

 ??  ??
 ??  ?? STAR IN THE ‘HOUSE’: Kim Kardashian (center left) leaves the White House Wednesday after her meeting with President Trump, where they talked criminal-justice issues and prison reform.
STAR IN THE ‘HOUSE’: Kim Kardashian (center left) leaves the White House Wednesday after her meeting with President Trump, where they talked criminal-justice issues and prison reform.
 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States