Alice Johnson is released from prison and reunited with her family after President Trump commuted her sentence. / WVTM13
The touching moment a first-time drug offender runs into the arms of her family after her life sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump has been captured on camera.
Great-grandmother Alice Johnson is seen sprinting into the arms of her waiting family in Aliceville, Alabama on Wednesday, just hours after Trump's announcement.
Wearing an all white outfit, she appears tearful as she is greeted by waiting relatives, one of whom is carrying a bunch of flowers.
Great-grandmother Alice Johnson is seen sprinting into the arms of her waiting family in Aliceville, Alabama. Photo / WVTM13
The footage was captured by local station WVTM-TV.
Hours earlier, Trump freed Johnson, 63, a first-time drug offender whose case has been championed by reality TV star Kim Kardashian.
The president commuted Johnson's life sentence after the personal plea in the Oval Office from the reality star.
Kardashian posted a story about Johnson with the caption: "BEST NEWS EVER!!!!"
"So grateful to @realDonaldTrump, Jared Kushner & to everyone who has showed compassion & contributed countless hours to this important moment for Ms. Alice Marie Johnson," she said in a follow-up message. "Her commutation is inspirational & gives hope to so many others who are also deserving of a second chance."
She said: "I hope to continue this important work by working together with organisations who have been fighting this fight for much longer than I have and deserve the recognition."
Kardashian said later that she'd had a call with Alice Johnson and that it "will forever be one of my best memories".
"Telling her for the first time and hearing her screams while crying together is a moment I will never forget," Kardashian tweeted.
Kim Kardashian said her meeting with Donald Trump went well after he tweeted the picture of them in the Oval Office.
Trump met with Kardashian last week to discuss Johnson's case in the Oval Office. The White House shared a picture of Kardashian and Trump, who was grinning from ear-to-ear, after the meeting that reporters were not allowed anywhere near.
Johnson's attorneys had prepped Kardashian for the meeting with Trump where she begged for clemency for the great-grandmother.
A lawyer for Johnson did not return a request for comment on the commutation.
Reporting out of the White House from the news site Axios originally was that Johnson had been pardoned.
A senior White House official told DailyMail.com that was inaccurate.
An official White House statement later said that it was a 'commutation' and that it was being granted because "Ms. Johnson has accepted responsibility for her past behavior and has been a model prisoner over the past two decades."
"Despite receiving a life sentence, Alice worked hard to rehabilitate herself in prison, and act as a mentor to her fellow inmates," the White House statement said, noting that even her warden had said she "exhibited outstanding and exemplary work ethic."
The White House said: "While this Administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves while in prison deserve a second chance."
Wearing an all white outfit, Alice Johnson appears tearful as she is hugged by waiting relatives, one of whom is carrying a bunch of flowers. Photo / WVTM13
The move to commute the sentence came after internal debate among his top advisers.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and White House counsel Don McGahn are said to have been less than thrilled, however, with the president's recent reprieve.
Both officials are said to have reviewed Johnson's case, which involved drug possession and money laundering, and were not convinced she should be set free, The Washington Post reported.
Kelly did not respond to questions from DailyMail.com after news of the commutation broke during a chance encounter.
A source told The Post that Trump is 'obsessed' with his almost unchecked ability to issue pardons and could issue a dozen more before the end of the summer.
Kim Kardashian posted a story about Johnson with the caption: "BEST NEWS EVER!!!!" Photo / Getty
CNN said the number he was considering was closer to 30.
An official affirmed the higher number to DailyMail.com.
Trump had already told reporters that he's also considering pardons for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Martha Stewart.
The Post says that Trump is also thinking about pardoning two ranchers from Oregon, Dwight and Steven Hammond.
They were convicted of arson charges in 2012 and sentenced to minimal time in prison, then resentenced to five years each at the behest of the government.
Johnson's case has a powerful ally in not just Kardashian, but the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who set up the face-to-face with the celebrity who's married to Kayne West.
Trump reportedly thanked Kardashian at the meeting for boosting his popularity with African-Americans, a group that has not strongly supported his presidency.
Two sources familiar with the conversation recounted it to Bloomberg News.
Trump received only 8 per cent of African-American vote in 2016, compared to the 88 per cent who supported Hillary Clinton.
Kardashian met with Trump and Kushner at the White House on May 30 to make her case for a presidential pardon for Johnson.
Trump has issued a pardon for conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza since that meeting.
Additionally, Trump has publicly said he could pardon Stewart and commute the sentence of Blagojevich.
Donald Trump is reportedly 'obsessed' with his ability to issue pardons and could issue a dozen more before the end of the summer. Photo / AP
The star of Keeping Up with the Kardashians told Mic News that her meeting with Trump went well after he tweeted the picture of them in the Oval Office.
"He really understood, and I am very hopeful that this will turn out really positively," she said.
Kardashian also sent out a tweet that said, "I would like to thank President Trump for his time this afternoon. It is our hope that the President will grant clemency to Ms. Alice Marie Johnson who is serving a life sentence for a first-time, non-violent drug offense."
After the meeting, Kardashian left the White House and headed for Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home.
Kardashian, who appeared on Trump's NBC show The Apprentice in 2010, said she voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
Kardashian avoided a pack of press staking her out.
Martha Stewart is one of those Donald Trump has said he is considering pardoning. Photo / File
About a month before, her husband, West, had praised Trump in a tweet that said: "You don't have to agree with trump but the mob can't make me not love him. We are both dragon energy."
He later revealed that his Make America Great Again hat is signed by Trump himself, posting a picture of the accessory.
Trump retweeted the message and wrote, "Thank you Kanye, very cool!"
The president then praised West at a rally in Michigan.
"Kanye West gets it — when he sees African American unemployment is the lowest in history, you know, people are watching," Trump told a crowd of supporters.
Trump credited the April tweet from West with raising his approval rating among African Americans during a speech to the National Rifle Association the first week in May.
Donald Trump credited an April tweet from Kanye West with raising his approval rating among African Americans. Photo / File
"Kanye West must have some power because you probably saw I doubled my African American poll numbers. We went from 11 to 22 in one week," Trump said at the NRA's annual conference in Texas.
A Reuters tracking poll showed Trump's approval among African-Americans rose by six points - from 12 per cent in April to 18 per cent in May. His support among male African Americans nearly doubled.
Who is Alice Johnson and why is Kim Kardashian involved?
Alice Marie Johnson, a mother-of-five, grandmother-of-six and great-grandmother of one, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after being convicted of drug dealing in 1996.
It was her first conviction and some of her co-conspirators testified against her in exchange for plea deals.
The 63-year-old grew up in Olive Branch, Mississippi, and was married and pregnant by age 15.
Great-grandmother Alice Johnson is seen sprinting into the arms of her waiting family in Aliceville, Alabama. Photo / WVTM13
In 1989, she and her husband divorced. Her life started to crumble as she struggled, as a single mother, to try and be financially stable for her five children, reports Mic. However, in 1990, because of a gambling addition, she was sacked by FedEx Corporation.
After filing for bankruptcy in 1991, Johnson lost her house. The next year, a scooter accident claimed the life of her youngest son, Cory.
It was while she was at rock bottom that Johnson became involved in a drug syndicate that imported cocaine into Memphis, Tennessee, where she acted as a go-between and passed on messages to drug dealers, relaying coded messages like "everything is straight" by telephone.
While admitting to acting as a middle man for the drug traffickers, passing on the messages in code via telephone, Johnson claims she never directly sold drugs.
She was arrested along with 15 others in 1993 on charges including conspiracy to possess cocaine, attempted possession of cocaine and money laundering.
But 10 of her alleged co-conspirators turned against her in exchange for reduced sentencing or dropped charges.
During the trial, evidence showed an operation with Texas-based Colombian drug dealers and their Memphis connections trading tons of cocaine for millions of dollars in cash.
At the time of Johnson's February 1997 sentencing the amount of drugs and money involved meant that federal laws mandated a life sentence, despite the fact Johnson was a first-time, nonviolent offender.
US District Judge Julia Gibbons, who sentenced Johnson, called the then 42-year-old the "quintessential entrepreneur" of the drug ring.
"And clearly the impact of 2000 to 3000 kilograms of cocaine in this community is very significant," Gibbons said at the sentencing.
The quantity of cocaine - up to three tons - would now be worth about US$85 million.
Johnson was 21 years into her life sentence at FCI Aliceville, in Aliceville, Alabama before it was commuted by President Donald Trump on May 6.
Her eldest daughter Tretessa Johnson, told Mic several years ago, "It's like a waking death; it's like the person is alive but they're not. There's never a point of closure, ever. It's heartbreaking for me."
Kim Kardashian West poses in the winner's walk with the Influencer award at the CFDA Fashion Awards at the Brooklyn Museum this week. Photo / AP
Tretessa has organised an online petition, via change.org, calling for her to be released, explaining that her family's life "changed forever" when she was sentenced to life in federal prison.
She said her mother had explained that she became a telephone mule passing messages between her co-conspirators after losing her job at FedEx.
Alice Johnson is quoted on Tretessa's petition: "I couldn't find a job fast enough to take care of my family. I felt like a failure.
"I went to a complete panic and out of desperation I made one of the worst decisions in my life to make some quick money. I became involved in a drug conspiracy."
Tretessa said that her "mom's desire upon release is to assist the community with the needs of ex-offenders to help reduce recidivism".
"It serves no purpose or benefit to society to have her locked up for life. Her large and loving immediate and extended family and friends would welcome her return."
During her time in prison, Johnson has displayed exemplary behavior, become an ordained minister, a published writer and a prison tutor, a biography from Can Do Clemency reports.
She had gained a large following of people pushing for her to be granted clemency. Part of this push saw her story turned into a short video, which went viral on social media.
Kim Kardashian saw the video and retweeted it to her millions of followers with the caption: "This is so unfair" in October last year.
Since then, she has been working to help Johnson receive clemency from Trump.
The reality star had her personal lawyer begin working on Johnson's case, and has spent months in conversation with Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and adviser, on the topic.
Kushner - whose father Charles is himself a federal felon - is pushing a criminal justice reform agenda.
