The New York Times reported that Donald Trump is considering appointing Alice Marie Johnson, a former prisoner pardoned by him in 2018, as “pardon czar”. This means she would be put in charge of the sensitive field of clemency grants.
In 1996, Johnson was locked up in an Alabama federal prison after being sentenced to life in prison for nonviolent drug offenses, cocaine possession and money laundering. A single mother of five, she was arrested in 1993 as part of an operation that transported cocaine from Houston to Memphis, relaying coded messages among conspirators.
She was given a life sentence without parole, even though she had never personally sold drugs. The sentence against Johnson, an African American, was seen as decidedly disproportionate by public opinion.
It was Kim Kardashian, in 2018, who brought the Memphis-born woman’s case to Trump’s attention at a meeting organized by Jared Kushner, the MAGA leader’s son-in-law. A week later, Trump, at the time in his first term in the White House, commuted Johnson’s sentence; she had recently turned 63. In 2020, during the election campaign, he finally granted Johnson a full pardon, thus erasing her previous conviction from her criminal record.
However, the Johnson case shows how Trump’s approach to justice is full of contradictions. The MAGA leader signed the First Step Act, which aimed to reduce prison sentences for certain nonviolent drug offenses, yet he later privately revealed to his advisers that he regretted it.
During his 2024 campaign, he called for shooting thieves who rob pharmacies and imposing the death penalty on drug traffickers and dealers. Then, in one of his first acts as president, he pardoned nearly all 1,600 people accused of taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot.
For her part, in a November 2024 TV interview, Ms. Johnson said that after her release she personally submitted more than 100 petitions to the White House after Trump asked her to compile a list of people she felt deserved clemency.
Reportedly, Trump has still not made a final decision, but is said to be considering the choice.
