Kim Kardashian Defends Working With President Donald Trump on Prison Reform

Last year, Kim Kardashian made headlines when she worked with President Donald Trump to help release Alice Marie Johnson from prison, bringing Johnson’s case to Trump’s attention after learning that the 63-year-old had been in prison on a non-violent drug charge since 1996. Trump met with Kardashian, CNN commentator Van Jones and multiple lawyers before making the decision that granted Johnson clemency, and Kardashian has since been working with lawyers and activists on criminal justice reform.

Speaking to Jones on Saturday’s episode of The Van Jones Show, Kardashian explained her decision to work with Trump, sharing that she felt the chance of freeing Johnson was more important than anything else.

“I know I got so many times people would say to me, ‘Don’t go to the White House, your career will be over, don’t go there,’” she said. “And I just kind of weighed the decision where it was like…to save a life or to get maybe bad tweets about me or a bad news story for a few days. I guarantee you the people sitting behind bars do not care who the president is. They just want that relief. And so if I could have done that, I don’t care.”

More legal action is certainly in Kardashian’s future, as the mom of three recently revealed that she is studying to become a lawyer. Speaking to Vogue, Kardashian explained that it was her work to free Johnson that led her to want to learn more about the law.

“The White House called me to advise to help change the system of clemency and I’m sitting in the Roosevelt Room with, like, a judge who had sentenced criminals and a lot of really powerful people and I just sat there, like, ‘Oh, s—. I need to know more,’” she recalled. “I would say what I had to say, about the human side and why this is so unfair. But I had attorneys with me who could back that up with all the facts of the case.”

“It’s never one person who gets things done; it’s always a collective of people, and I’ve always known my role, but I just felt like I wanted to be able to fight for people who have paid their dues to society,” Kardashian continued. “I just felt like the system could be so different, and I wanted to fight to fix it, and if I knew more, I could do more.”

Kardashian began an apprenticeship with a San Francisco law firm last summer and is planning to take the California bar exam in 2022. This summer, she’ll take what’s known as the “baby bar,” and will be allowed to continue her studies if she passes.

Photo Credit: Getty / Steven Ferdman