Alice Johnson, the grandmother freed by President Trump on the advice of Kim Kardashian, was sentenced to life in prison by a crime bill that Joe Biden co-sponsored, wrote and championed, The Post can reveal.
As a single mom of five in 1996, Johnson, now 65, was slapped with five concurrent life sentences without the chance of parole on a first-time non-violent drug charge for her involvement in a million-dollar cocaine ring.
Trump commuted her sentence in June 2018 following lobbying from reality TV star and lawyer-in-training Kardashian, and Johnson will speak at Thursday’s 2020 Republican National Convention finale.
But Johnson would never have been sentenced to life in prison if not for a 1986 drug abuse act written by then-Sen. Joe Biden that stiffened penalties for drug offenses and disproportionately targeted black people.
President Barack Obama and his veep also refused Johnson’s pleas for clemency three times, including in the final days of their administration, according to a CNN report.
Biden co-authored the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which allowed judges to sentence first-time felons to life imprisonment for drug offenses exceeding 5 kilograms of cocaine.
Previously, a person could not be sentenced to more than 20 years for cocaine offenses.
Biden was later praised by his Democratic colleagues in the Senate for his “diligence” in making possible a law that also created huge sentencing discrepancies between powder and crack cocaine — a drug more commonly used among black Americans.
The law made it so that someone who was caught trying to sell just 5 grams of crack would be given the same penalty as someone dealing 500 grams of cocaine powder, creating a disparity of 100 to 1.
The then-senator from Delaware boasted about his efforts on the Senate floor and the “striking changes in sentencing law” that he was responsible for.
But by 2008, Biden, on the eve of becoming Obama’s veep, was forced to acknowledge the huge racial disparities his bill created and blamed bad data.
“Our intentions were good, but much of our information was bad,” he said during a judiciary hearing. “Each of the myths upon which we based the sentencing disparity has since been dispelled or altered.”
The septuagenarian lawmaker has faced increased scrutiny of his criminal justice record since announcing his White House bid — particularly a 1994 crime law he authored that has been credited with contributing to “mass incarceration.”
His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), also oversaw 1,900 convictions for marijuana as a San Francisco district attorney.
Along with Johnson, over 2,000 federal prisoners were serving life sentences for non-violent drug offenses in 2018, according to federal corrections data analyzed by criminal justice group the Sentencing Project.
Drug offenders make up nearly one-third of federal prisoners who have been put away for life in the United States.
Johnson has since become one of the faces of the Trump administration’s criminal justice reforms and appeared in the president’s 2020 Super Bowl ad.
She is expected to give a positive address at Thursday’s Republican convention finale about how Trump gave her a second chance at life and will not speak about how Biden’s law robbed her of that opportunity.
The Tennessee woman has previously recounted how she took to drug dealing as a way to provide for her children after losing her job and has described the move as “the worst decision of my life.”
Speaking at a White House prison reform event after her release, Johnson thanked Trump for “believing” in her.
“I’m an example of a woman who has been given a second chance in life. There are so many others who deserve that same second chance,” she said.
Since announcing his own White House bid, Biden has sought to portray himself as a progressive and put distance between himself and his congressional record.
As part of his criminal justice plan, Biden acknowledged too many black and brown Americans are incarcerated and vowed to pass legislation ending mandatory minimum prison sentences on the federal level.
He has also vowed to expand funding for drug and mental health treatment and end the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine which he helped introduce.
The Biden campaign and Johnson did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Post on Thursday.
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Like our page on facebook @ Info4everybody Last Wednesday, we published the success story from Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a board-certified family practitioner in New York, after he successfully treated 350 coronavirus patients with 100 percent success using a cocktail of drugs: hydroxychloroquine, in combination with azithromycin (Z-Pak), an antibiotic to treat secondary infections, and zinc sulfate. Dr. Zelenko said he saw the symptom of shortness of breath resolved within four to six hours after treatment. Do you know that the ancient Egypt were civilized by architects from the (500,000 - 4000 BC) Nsukka Civiliation? Now, Dr. Zelenko provides updates on the treatment after he successfully treated 699 COVID-19 patients in New York. In an exclusive interview with former New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, Dr. Vladmir Zelenko shares the results of his latest study, which showed that out of his 699 patients treated, zero patients died, zero patients intubated, and four ho
Copied from the book, Reality as Myth by Onyeji Nnaji . The influence of the Akan on their content nations lies on their population and commonwealth of their sister nations. The Akan are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. Their population is scattered across West Africa and beyond. Origin of Africa Among this huge population of the Akan, the Ghanaians are more popular, perhaps because of the political influence of the Ashanti Empire in the area. Not much is heard or known about other Akan settlements like the Akwamu, the Akyem , the Akuapem, the Denkyira, the Abron, the Aowin, the Ahanta, the Anyi, the Baoule, the Chokosi, the Fante, the Kwahu, the Sefwi, the Ahafo, the Assin, the Evalue, the Wassa the Adjukru, the Akye, the Alladian, the Attie,the M'Bato, the Abidji, the Avikam,the Avatime the Ebrie, the Ehotile, the Nzema, the Abbe, the Aboure, the Coromantins, t
Copied from the Book; " Reality as Myth " by Onyeji Nnaji The beauty of the discovering of the Radar Rivers and their channels is that it disproves the western hegemonic claim of the Euphrates valley being the position of the birth of the great river, all the points that opposed their claims notwithstanding. Even God himself was very perfect in His creation by placing them in their positions, hierarchically, according to their birth. The first river that flowed located the Havilah land where there are good quality gold, bdellium and fine onyx stones. Pison was the oldest of the rivers and it flowed through the land of the southern Africa. The second river flowed northward to Ethiopia. It was when Africa had been overtaken by virtue of her proximity to the Great Water that other parts of the world began to encounter the remaining river; remarkable with Hiddekel. Subscribe to ajuede.com to be updated on our posts on dailies. The major problem towards
INTRODUCTION In the history of syntax, prepositions alongside other parts of speech are considered as one of the esteemed contributions of the sophists (the itinerant teachers) to the development of the human language. Etymologically, the term “preposition” belonged to the group of word class Aristotle, the founder, referred to as “syndesmoi”. Others in this group are conjunction , article and pronoun . They were thus grouped by Aristotle because they were found to be performing related functions that are summed up in binding terms and exposing the gaps amidst sentences when they are not included. As a plural term, “syndesmoi” is a collective noun that stands for the group while, conjunction , the part of speech that binds together the discourse and finds gaps in its interpretation was called “syndesmos” (see Robins, 1968). Indicating the function of prepositions, Aristotle called it “Prothesis” (a part of speech placed before other words in a composition
Taylor Swift says she is focused on the 2020 election but ‘I do feel that the celebrity involvement with Hillary’s campaign was used against her’. Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/VMN19/Getty Images for MTV After years of keeping herself at a largely indifferent remove, Taylor Swift has elaborated on her political ideology in a new interview with Rolling Stone. Harkening back to the perceived better times of the Obama years, Swift said, among other things, that she regrets not getting more involved in the 2016 election, and the way her allegiances or lack thereof have been manipulated by bad actors. For years her reluctance to stake out a claim one way or the other made her something of a useful political totem, including, notably, when neo-Nazis and alt-right trolls adopted her as an Aryan ideal. “Firstly, Taylor Swift is a pure Aryan goddess, like something out of classical Greek poetry. Athena reborn,” Andre Anglin of the white supremacist blog the Daily Stormer wrot
There are four generations…, and the fourth generation, which is the most exalted, is kingless and perfect. These people will enter the holy place of their Father and they will reside in rest … They are kings. They are the immortal within the mortal ( The Nag Hammadi, 219 ) O ne of the African homes that colonialism has completely deformed beyond certain level of recognition is Nsukka. Colonialism apart, the most affecting factor to the survival of the meaning which the rich cultural enclave, Nsukka, carries will best be blamed on postcolonial political structure. The biggest harm all these have against Nsukka as a people is that they rubbed her of the meaning of her name; their place of origin; how their fathers managed to come into their present abodes and who their ancestors were. A profound understanding of the excerpt above will open the door towards deciphering the meaning and origin of the people called Nsukka. Also read Nsukka Civilization: The Pe
STRICTLY FOR COUPLES … You will know that the man is the head while you are his neck. As such, you direct his focus and make him fixative Our series include the following : * Show him what he looks out for from other women * Teach him like he knows nothing * Learn to play naked games with your husband * Learn to package yourself * Learn to work on your husband M y neighbour had v owed never to let any girl survive as a salesgirl in my shop. This thing has happened for over three times. Each time we brought a new salesgirl, the girl would stay for two or three months; and suddenly she would end her contract with us. In all these, my husband did not know. So, being that the girls usually stole money and other items, the reason for their departure became genuine, thus: they ran away to avoid being punished for their actions. But behind this, the underlying truth is that the girls had been embarrassed by my neighbour who would warn them to leave her loosed husband. Re
Copied from the book, Reality as Myths by Onyeji Nnaji T he world of the Bantu travellers shows the walls of the migration that recorded the highest population among the African settlement. Originating from the largest population among the four races that settled in the east before time, all Bantu travellers were pygmies; for that was the nature of the Umudiala, the generation that gave birth to them. The Wikipedia map for Bantu migrations shown below will be of help towards digesting our descriptions of the Bantu people. Bantu migration was rated the third earliest migration of the Negro race from the east. In this regard, all their movement had involved great population of people compared to the number of people involved in the two earlier populations that gave birth to Ethiopia, Nubia and Egypt: the Walker Traveller, and the Race of Anu. Bantu population as we have identified in the third chapter above outweighs the rest of the population of the ancient fathers
T he name Nkalaha is a coinage which stands for a people occupying a geographical land and regional setting in the eastern part of Nigeria. It is a coinage which attempts to explain the direction of movement and adventure of the men who founded the community in the beginning. According to oral sources and some documentation about this community, some of these men were believed to have traveled from Ida, old Benue state of Nigeria to inhabit the land. These men had traveled on different days to locate the place. Onojah who originally founded the land was said to have been in a deep search for a place of safety as he was besieged by a fate that appeared to make him somewhat incompatible with his own people. Other works bothering on Nkalaha are stated below. Touch any of the topics and read them to increase your understanding of your home. Make comments where necessary. * The History of Nkalaha language * Myth and the Nkalaha world * The negative effects of politics in Nka
Strictly for Couples T he biggest risk every marriage faces is what I call the retiring time. There is actually no retiring time for marriage as the union directly speaks of itself. But many marriages normally do have certain time in their history when the couples begin to ware away from the other like a baked clod-and-pebble. By this time the parties find it difficult to retrace the path that once brought them together. You may have heard “I don’t think I sought your hands in marriage with clear eyes”. Next, they may say that the other used means on them. It is not always so, even when some people believe that someone could use means as a wooing instrument. Some of the causes of such situations have been discussed in the series 1 through 3. But when someone does not have any of these problems discussed in the series, then it is simply that such a wife needs to make herself look relatively younger that her age to enforce attraction on her husband. To do this one need
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