President Donald Trump on Thursday appointed Alice Marie Johnson, a woman he pardoned during his first term, as ‘pardon czar.’<\/p>\n
The announcement came during a Black History Month event at the White House.<\/p>\n
The ‘pardon czar’ will be responsible for making recommendations about who should be granted clemency.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The New York Times first reported Trump was thinking about naming Johnson ‘pardon czar.’<\/p>\n
Johnson was convicted of nonviolent drug trafficking in Memphis, Tennessee, and after serving 21 years, her life sentence was commuted by Trump.<\/p>\n
Reality television star Kim Kardashian West met with Trump at the White House a week prior to her release to discuss the great-grandmother’s case.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
She was arrested in 1993 and convicted of drug conspiracy and money laundering in 1996.<\/p>\n
A series of unfortunate events, including the death of her son, financial troubles and a divorce, led her to involvement with cocaine dealers.<\/p>\n
‘Back in the 1990s, I was a single mother about to lose my house,’ Johnson wrote in a Fox News Digital opinion article. ‘In a desperate moment, I made a life-altering bad decision to become a low-level player in a drug operation. When law enforcement authorities<\/u> broke up the drug operation, I was prosecuted and sentenced to life in prison.’<\/p>\n
While Johnson claims she never ‘touched, saw or sold a single drug,’ she admitted to assisting in communications. <\/p>\n
While in prison, she worked in the prison hospice, volunteered in the prison church, became an ordained minister, and started writing and directing plays.<\/p>\n
After being pardoned, she remained under federal supervision for five years.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
She became a champion for overburdened case officers and has fought against unnecessary supervision post-incarceration.<\/p>\n
Her work on criminal justice reform led her to launch ‘Taking Action For Good,’ which advocated for clemency and pardons for over 100 people.<\/p>\n
She also published a book and partnered with the philanthropic organization, Stand Together.<\/p>\n
Fox News Digital’s Kaitlyn Schallhorn, Emma Colton and Alice Marie Johnson contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Donald Trump on Thursday appointed Alice Marie Johnson, a woman he pardoned during his first term, as ‘pardon czar.’ The announcement came during a Black History Month event at the White House. The ‘pardon czar’ will be responsible for making recommendations about who should be granted clemency. The New York Times first reported Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uscryptoinsiders.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uscryptoinsiders.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uscryptoinsiders.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uscryptoinsiders.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uscryptoinsiders.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uscryptoinsiders.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uscryptoinsiders.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uscryptoinsiders.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uscryptoinsiders.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uscryptoinsiders.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}