Key advisers to President Obama had a “productive” meeting Thursday with the top attorney for conservative billionaire businessmen Charles and David Koch on legislation to ease sentencing laws for drug offenders, the White House said.
Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden agreed with senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett and White House counsel Neil Eggleston that a Senate criminal justice reform bill is “an important first step,” a White House official said.
Mr. Obama is pushing for a wide range of reforms to the justice system, including releasing inmates who were sentenced to long prison terms for crack cocaine offenses instituted in the 1980s, creating more programs to ease the transition of inmates who have served their sentences, and lessening the impact of fees, fines and bail on the poor.
“The conversation highlighted the need for a sustained commitment to criminal justice reform at all phases of the system,” the White House official said about the meeting. “All committed to push for additional reforms that would make our justice system smarter, more effective and more fair.”
The White House said Mr. Holden will meet with the president’s advisers again soon.
When Mr. Obama spoke at the annual NAACP convention last summer, he praised the Koch brothers for working with the administration on criminal-justice reform.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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