Earlier this week, Kim Kardashian West took to the White House to meet with President Donald Trump to talk prison reform and request a pardon for Alice Marie Johnson, the 62-year-old great-grandmother serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense. Now, days after the encounter, the socialite sat down with Mic.com to explain just how that meeting went.
"I think that he really spent the time to listen to our case that we were making for Alice," Kardashian said of her meeting alongside her attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, in a new video interview. "He really understood, and I am very hopeful that this will turn out really positively."
In the video feature, Kardashian West also shared her phone call with Johnson while she was leaving the White House. "I love you for real. From my heart, I love you," Johnson told the socialite via speakerphone. "From my soul I love you. From my spirit I love you."
"It's funny because people will just hear something and not understand, 'What does Kim have to do with prison reform?' Seven months ago I saw a story on Twitter and it was about a great-grandmother that just tugged at my heart and it was just that simple connection," she explained in the sit-down interview. "If it takes me to go and talk to the highest person in power, the only person that can make this happen, which is President Trump, then I will definitely do that."
In case you need to get caught up, Johnson became involved with people selling drugs out of desperation after she lost her job and was unable to pay her bills. It led to a 1993 arrest, where she was accused of participating in a drug trafficking and money-laundering operation that distributed cocaine. Even though she never made drug deals, she did communicate messages and assisted in the process by letting people use her phone. "I felt like a failure," Johnson wrote in an October op-ed. "I went into a complete panic and out of desperation, I made one of the worst decisions of my life to make some quick money. I became involved in a drug conspiracy."
Photo: Getty Images