Alice Marie Johnson thanked President Donald Trump on Thursday for commuting her life sentence and said it was divine intervention that made Kim Kardashian appeal to the commander-in-chief on her behalf.
“I know that it was a miracle, I know that only God could have touched Kim Kardashian’s heart like that and we have connected,” Johnson, 63, said in an interview on the “Today” show.
“She said that she felt something when she saw and heard my story and I’m just so thankful for it, I can’t explain it, it’s a miracle,” the Tennessee grandmother added.
Kardashian and her team worked to free Johnson – who spent 22 years behind bars for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense and Trump decided she’d served her time and announced she’d be freed on Wednesday.
“I would tell President Trump thank you so much. That I am going to be that one that is going to make you so proud and I hope that my life will encourage him to do this for others, too,” Johnson said in an interview on “CBS This Morning” Thursday.
She also thanked her “war angel” Kardashian.
“I want to tell my war angel, thank you for never giving up, you did it, you fought and you fought until I was free,” she said.
Johnson was jailed in 1996 for drug trafficking after she became broke and suffered through a series of tragedies. She said she turned her life around in prison and decided that she wasn’t “going to just do time or let time do me.”
Now that she’s free, she said she wants to advocate for inmates with similar stories.
“I want to take this chance to try to magnify what has happened with me so that people will remember that there are other people just like me who are non-violent, first-time offenders who pose no safety risk to their communities,” she told “Today.” “I can’t just walk away and forget those who have been left behind.”