As President Donald Trump announced his pardons for Todd and Julie Chrisley during an Oval Office call on Tuesday, his newly minted “pardon czar,” Alice Johnson, stood proudly beside him.
Trump famously pardoned Johnson in 2018 after she served more than 20 years of her life sentence in prison for a 1996 drug trafficking conviction. The Mississippi grandmother became the face of President Trump’s First Step Act, a bipartisan law that made several reforms to the criminal justice system, including lowering criminal penalties for nonviolent crimes.
“They were given pretty harsh treatment from what I’m hearing,” Trump told the Chrisleys’ daughter and son, Savannah and Grayson, during his Oval Office phone call.
Todd and Julie Chrisley were convicted in 2022 for financial fraud and tax evasion. Johnson, wearing all red as she flanked the president, was credited by Trump for making the pardons for the Chrisleys possible.
“Alice had a lot to do with this,” said President Trump.
BREAKING!
President Trump calls @_ItsSavannah_ to inform her that he will be granting full pardons to her parents, Todd and Julie Chrisley!
Trump Knows Best! pic.twitter.com/j5WPMOOQ7L
— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) May 27, 2025
Before her recent elevation at the Trump White House, Johnson spent her life after prison as a vocal criminal justice reform advocate. Critics say that while Johnson’s advocacy is noble, it falls flat with some of President Trump’s latest pardons, which included Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who pled guilty to withholding employees’ taxes used to fund his luxurious lifestyle; and Scott Jenkins, a former sheriff in Culpeper County, Va., who was convicted in 2024 of campaign bribery and conspiracy.
All those pardoned by Trump were supporters of Trump or had familial connections to those who supported his presidential campaigns. Not to mention, they were pardoned for white-collar crimes similar to those for which Trump was convicted or accused of committing.
President Trump also pardoned rapper NBA YoungBoy on Wednesday, a decision that was less controversial and likely a popular one among Black and young Americans with an affinity for his music. While Trump’s commuting of the federal sentence of former Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover was embraced by some, it was dismissed by others as “political theatre,” as Hoover will still have to serve out the rest of his 200-year sentence in state prison. NBA YoungBoy and Larry Hoover’s son both credited Johnson for the clemency.
“President Trump, during his first administration, was smart in choosing her as the person who would basically carry on his campaign for the First Step Act,” said political strategist Ameshia Cross, who noted that making Johnson the White House’s pardon czar is meant to “send a message.”
“If Donald Trump is good at one thing, it is really messaging and messaging strategy. He is using somebody who can speak to the Black community, but it’s also as a symbol to say that she was done wrong by the system,” Cross told theGrio. “He’s hoping that that transfers to these individuals that he has most recently pardoned.”
While Johnson “understands the calls from the Black community,” Trump’s pardons were not related to Black and brown individuals who have been disproportionately sentenced due to the failed war on drugs, but rather were “reflected by wealthy white Americans,” she said.
“These are folks who are taking advantage of the common man. These are folks who skirted taxes. These are folks who scammed for millions of dollars–so it’s not the same thing,” Cross argued.
Reecie Colbert, political expert and host of Sirius XM’s “The Reecie Colbert Show,” argued that Johnson’s role reflects President Trump’s cleverness and how he has “tokenized Black people in his orbit.”
“Alice Johnson represents mercy on Trump’s behalf, and so she’s there to represent mercy, in particular, toward Black people. But she’s also there to provide cover,” Colbert told theGrio.
She explained, “She’s there to provide cover for this administration ending consent decrees for police departments that arose out of the racial reckoning behind George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. She’s there to provide cover for them retracting investigative findings of discrimination in the Tyre Nichols case. She’s there to be that cover for all of these egregiously racist and hostile policies toward the Black community.”
Colbert said that she understands why Alice Johnson “feels indebted to Trump” and might feel that there’s a “righteousness in what she’s doing,” but added, “There’s nothing righteous about it.” She described Johnson standing by some of President Trump’s policies as “embarrassing” and “disgraceful.”
“I’m happy that she got the mercy that she deserved, but to provide cover for this racist administration, which is empowering cops to continue to brutalize and discriminate against Black people in Black communities, I think is appalling and unconscionable,” she said. “Because she’s Grandma Alice, it does not make it OK.”
