Same Rump. Different Trump.
Reality TV superstar Kim Kardashian West took her celeb-fueled campaign for criminal justice reform back to the White House on Wednesday, where she pressed for the release of another non-violent drug offender sentenced to life in prison.
The blazer-clad Kim met with top Trump advisers, including Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner, who leads the White House’s criminal justice efforts.
“The discussion is mainly focused on ways to improve that process to ensure deserving cases receive a fair review,” said Hogan Gidley, White House deputy press secretary.
The meeting came three months after Kardashian successfully lobbied President Trump to pardon 63-year-old Alice Marie Johnson, who spent two decades in jail on drug charges.
Trump granted the pardon a week later.
The President did not appear at the most recent confab. Instead, his daughter — who introduced Kardashian to Kushner — sat at one end of the table, with her husband at the other, photos show.
Kardashian’s message remained the same.
“It started with Ms. Alice, but looking at her and seeing the faces and learning the stories of the men and women I’ve met inside prisons I knew I couldn’t stop at just one,” the star tweeted. “It’s time for REAL systemic change.”
Kardashian was joined at the sit-down by one-time Obama adviser Van Jones, Shon Hopwood, a lawyer who served time in prison for bank robbery and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who has been instrumental in steering Trump’s Supreme Court picks.
The meeting is part of an effort to build support for overhauling the nation’s drug laws, sentencing requirements and prisons, Jones told reporters.
And, he added, it gave Kardashian the chance to press the White House to consider another case in which she has taken an interest: Chris Young, who was sent to prison for life after a string of convictions on non-violent drug charges.
Young, who was 26 at the time, received a life sentence in August 2014 from then-U.S. District Judge Kevin Sharp, who has since left the bench and has very publicly opposed the mandatory minimum sentencing he had to hand down.
Kardashian, a mainstay of the gossip pages, told the ‘Wrongful Conviction’ podcast on Tuesday the case caught her attention.
“It’s so unfair. He’s 30 years old. He’s been in for almost 10 years,” she said.
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