Normal English sentence: Kim Kardashian is set to jet off to Washington D.C. for a formal visit to the White House, where she will be discussing the issue of domestic prison reform with US President Donald Trump.
Extremely normal sentence. The most normal, ordinary string of words.
Vanity Fair reports that the meeting is scheduled to take place on Wednesday (US time), and will see Kim travel to the White House with an entrusted lawyer – no reality TV cameras, famous siblings, or associated media personnel will be present – to discuss the on-going push for prison reform coming from within Trump’s own camp, and in addition, to ask for the pardon of a 62-year-old great grandmother serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug conviction handed down over 21 years ago.
If you want, take a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor, and we’ll continue.
The whole shebang goes thusly: Some time ago, Kardashian learned of the plight of 62-year-old Alice Marie Johnson.
In 1996 Johnson was charged and convicted of conspiracy to possess cocaine, attempted possession of cocaine, and money laundering. Johnson had previously lost her job and in desperation to provide for her children, by her own admission, made the mistake of becoming a telephone mule for a drug conspiracy ring, passing messages between co-conspirators.
The charges levelled against Johnson were all for nonviolent crimes, and represented her first ever serious run-in with the law; she had no prior charges on her record before this incident.
Despite this, a system of harsh-penalties-as-deterrent saw her levelled with the staggering sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In her 21 years behind bars, reports suggest Johnson has been a model inmate who helps mentor younger prisoners, and has become an ordained minister.
Upon learning of the case, Kardashian began reaching out to Ivanka Trump and, subsequently, Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner. Kushner himself has a particular interest in prison reform, given his father served a year in a prison camp for tax evasion and other extremely, extremely white-collar crimes.
So now, thanks to Kushner’s recent approval of a permanent, top-level security clearance for the West Wing, Kardashian will be meeting with the First Son-In-Law at the White House, before the duo meets with President Trump in the Oval Office where Kim By-God Kardashian will ask the President of the United States to pardon a woman harshly dealt with by America’s severely imbalanced criminal justice system.
I just… I mean…
Sometimes you say you’ve seen everything but you quite clearly haven’t. And then something like this comes along and you’ve got no idea where to go from there.
