President Trump is tapping Alice Johnson, the 69-year-old grandmother he granted clemency in his first term over long-ago drug offenses, to be his “pardon czar.”
The president made the announcement during a Black History Month event in the White House East Room Thursday afternoon. Johnson spent over 21 years in prison for nonviolent drug-related crimes when Mr. Trump commuted her sentence and she was released in 2018. Mr. Trump later issued her a full pardon.
“You’ve been an inspiration to people, and we’re going to be listening to your recommendation on pardons,” Mr. Trump told Johnson on Thursday. ” You’re going to go over and you’re going to be — you’re going to, she’s going to be my pardon czar, okay? And you’re going to find people just like you that should not this should not have happened. It should not have happened. So you’re going to look and you’re going to make recommendations, and I’ll follow those recommendations, okay? For pardons. All right?”
Mr. Trump said Johnson was “in prison for doing something that today probably wouldn’t even be prosecuted.”
Johnson was convicted in 1996 for “leading a multi-million-dollar drug ring that dealt in tons of cocaine”in the early 1990s, according to a report in The Tennessean at the time. She was tried on charges of cocaine conspiracy and money-laundering charges. She was sentenced to life plus 25 years behind bars.
Celebrity Kim Kardashian was pivotal in bringing Johnson’s case to Mr. Trump’s attention.
So far in his second term, Mr. Trump has pardoned hundreds of Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol assault participants; Democratic former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on public corruption charges related to attempts to sell former President Barack Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat; and Ross Ulbricht, who was sent to life in prison for his role in creating and operating the darknet market Silk Road.
Presidents have broad authority to issue pardons and commutations, so long as the crimes are federal offenses and not state ones. Typically, the Justice Department’s pardon office vets pardon requests for the president to consider, but Mr. Trump thus far has often made his own pardon choices.
contributed to this report.
