President Trump ended a week dominated by coverage of impeachment proceedings by attacking Democrats for passing harsh crime laws and vowing to release more people serving long prison sentences.
Trump held court for 43 minutes on a Friday night in the White House East Room, with enthusiastic black supporters booing a Democratic pundit, defending his work in office, and cheering his role in passing the First Step Act last year.
Warm feelings were mutual as Trump reminisced about releasing Alice Johnson last year on the advice of Kim Kardashian. Johnson was 21 years into a life sentence for a drug-dealing conspiracy and has since become a prominent public speaker.
“[Johnson] gave us some names. And not even that many names, but she gave us four, five names. And I guarantee you those are great people,” Trump told the Young Black Leadership Summit. “We’re getting them out now. We’re in the process of getting them out to be with their families.”
Some advocates view Trump’s renewed enthusiasm for releasing inmates as a reflection of his own sense of unfair persecution. Others note it’s a potential bludgeon against Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, who supported harsh drug laws in the 1990s.
“It started with the Clintons. It was not good,” Trump said, alluding to the 1994 crime law authored by then-Sen. Biden that forced mandatory sentences for repeat offenders. “The African American and Hispanic communities, by far, benefited the most” from his new law that lowered some penalties, he said.
Johnson said she was pleased to hear Trump’s remarks.
“Freedom is a gift that I do not take for granted. There are so many more women and men deserving of the same mercy that was given to me. I must amplify the voices of those I left behind because I promised to fight for them,” she said.
Trump has mused before about wanting to release people like Johnson, and criminal justice reform advocates say they hope he will follow through.
“I would hope the president would go forward and commute whoever Alice is recommending,” said Mark Holden, a senior vice president at Koch Industries. “There are a lot of people like Alice who are not dangerous but who had drug crimes.”
Advocates have walked several lists into the West Wing. But just six people have had prison sentences cut short directly by Trump so far, including two Jewish Americans championed by Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz.
“You have to appeal to his sense of injustice. He feels he is now being subject to injustice, and so he’s very sensitive to injustices,” Dershowitz told the Washington Examiner after his first success.
An Arkansas businessman and a father-son pair of ranchers also won commutations with support from Republican politicians.
Margaret Love, the U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 and 1997 and an attorney for the ranchers, said the First Step Act might allow early releases without Trump bestowing individual grants of clemency.
The law allows inmates to petition judges for compassionate release citing “extraordinary and compelling reasons,” generally but not always involving age and illness.
“In reality, Trump’s First Step Act pretty much does away with the need for clemency to reduce prison sentences in most cases,” Love said.
Still, advocates are keeping up the pressure, with Trump’s clemency a swift path to release.
Amy Povah, the founder of the pro-clemency CAN-DO Foundation, has sent to the White House lists of those deserving clemency, including Michael Pelletier, a paralyzed man jailed for life for smuggling marijuana from Canada into Maine, both of which have legalized the drug.
Other names pushed to the White House include long-serving LaShonda Hall, Lavonne Roach, Shanita McKnight, Charles Tanner, Rufus Rochell, and Crystal Munoz.
“We hope this holiday season will bring much cheer to the countless people suffering unjust sentences passed during the late ’80s and ’90s by a Congress that was competing to look tough on crime, with Sen. Joe Biden leading the charge,” Povah said.
