Kim Kardashian West at White House for meeting to discuss Trump clemency process

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President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of a woman serving a life sentence for drug offenses whose cause was championed by reality TV star Kim Kardashian West during a visit to the White House. | AP

WASHINGTON – Kim Kardashian West was among the invitees to a White House “listening session” on clemency Wednesday, with the meeting coming in the wake of President Donald Trump’s interest in granting more pardons and commutations – including to imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

“Today at the White House, members of the Administration are hosting a listening session about the clemency process. The discussion is mainly focused on ways to improve that process to ensure deserving cases receive a fair review,” Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement.

Pictures Kardashian West posted on Twitter showed Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka, both White House advisers, at the meeting in the Roosevelt Room.

In a series of celebrated cases, Trump has been ignoring the process used by the Justice Department to make clemency recommendations to a president.

Earlier this year, Kardashian West successfully lobbied Trump to commute the life sentence of nonviolent drug offender Alice Marie Johnson.

Trump, without being asked or lobbied, in April pardoned Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney who was involved in the leak probe of CIA agent Valerie Plame; that pardon was seen as sending a signal to Paul Manafort and others snared by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

In May, Trump told reporters, “I am seriously thinking about — not pardoning — but I am seriously thinking of a curtailment of Blagojevich because what he did does not justify 18 years in a jail,” misstating Blagojevich’s sentence, which was actually 14 years.

Blagojevich’s wife, Patti, has been making public appeals — most notably on Fox television — asking Trump for clemency.

And just to keep every front covered, in June, Blagojevich’s attorneys filed paperwork with the Justice Department asking Trump to commute his sentence on federal corruption charges.

The wife of Chicagoan George Papadopoulos, who will be sentenced Friday in a federal court after pleading guilty to one count of lying to Special Counsel Mueller’s investigators, also has appeared on Fox and other broadcast outlets, seeking clemency for her husband.

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