Former rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas), a conservative champion unjustly convicted and imprisoned on questionable campaign finance charges, faces what amounts to the death penalty thanks to outrageous behavior within the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

During the Obama presidency, Steve was a fierce critic of official wrongdoing and was targeted for prosecution, and eventually unjustly convicted even after three federal grand juries refused to indict him on trumped up campaign finance charges.  (Please see his wife Patti Stockman’s AT articles here, here, here, and here.)  Following his conviction for a nonviolent, non-sexual crime, his treatment in prison has been abominable, and now he is facing death from COVID-19 due to his extreme vulnerability to infection and the widespread incidence of the disease in the prison where he languishes.  Prison authorities refuse compassionate release with home confinement, as has been done with thousands of prisoners, and instead keep him incarcerated in a cell block with a very high incidence of the disease.

Steve Stockman (photo credit: Gage Skidmore).

My friend Richard Viguerie has published a must-read column at Conservative HQ detailing what appears to me to be an assassination plot.  I urge readers to read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts:

By the day if not by the hour, conservative movement champion former Congressman Steve Stockman's situation grows perilously close to a death sentence.

Steve is the only over-60 diabetic prisoner remaining at the Beaumont, Texas federal prison facility, which also has the highest per capita COVID-19 infection rate of any prison in the country.

And he's been told by prison officials he will not be leaving on orders "straight from the top" in Washington!!!

It's clear someone wants him dead.

Someone in Washington is ordering that his life not be saved by being released to home detention.

There needs to be investigations into who it is.

A.G. Barr and President Trump need start an investigation now! Time is short, and Steve must be moved out of his lethal environment.

Steve's age (63), multiple co-morbidities (diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, asthma, and more), and the nonviolent, non-sexual nature of his conviction (charges after three grand juries refused to indict him, involving campaign finance and fundraising from two wealthy Republican donors, neither of whom filed complaints) clearly make him eligible for release to home detention, consistent with a March 26 directive from Attorney General William Barr to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons for "at risk" inmates.

And despite the known positive benefits of sunlight to fight off coronavirus, Steve has not been allowed outside in many weeks.

Compassionate release would not qualify as special treatment.  In fact, the continued incarceration is discriminatory treatment:

A UCLA COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project reports that over 70,000 people have been released from jail due to the COVID-19 threat, and over 33,000 released from prison consistent with federal "compassion" guidelines directed by a very law-and-order Attorney General, William Barr.

Steve has filed and even re-filed the papers for release to home confinement, including a petition for "Compassionate Release" he filed with Warden F. J. Garrido on April 4, to which Garrido responded on April 20. Steve was told on April 24 he'd be placed in pre-release quarantine, but was then turned away at the door by prison staff.

Soon after, and one more time since then, Steve was told by prison officials he will not be leaving on orders from the top. [emphasis in original]

On May 21 Warden Garrido wrote responding to someone inquiring about Steve's release, noting that Attorney General Barr authorized the Director of the Bureau of Prisons to "maximize appropriate transfers to home confinements of all appropriate inmates" at certain prisons where "COVID-19 is materially affecting operations."

Garrido's letter goes on to say the Beaumont prison "will take swift action to exercise its expanded home confinement authority for any inmate who is found to be at risk for COVID-19 and suitable for home confinement."

Steve fits the criteria for release to home detention. The directions "from the top" that he not be released is a death sentence.

Dead men, after all, tell no tales.

John Griffing, another critic of Stockman's treatment, writes to me:

In April, Stockman's caseworker advised he'd made the list for transfer to home confinement under the CARES Act, due to his advanced age, and health conditions that include asthma-scarred lungs, hypertension and diabetes.

But then, inexplicably, and without warning, Steve's release was denied.

After protesting, the prison official responsible sneeringly remarked, "You are safer in prison," also stressing that Steve had not "completed 50 percent of his sentence."

John also points to the origins of the prosecution of Stockman:

The hill Stockman "died on," to borrow an old political adage, is Lois Lerner. 

During her tenure as IRS chief, Lerner purposefully criminalized applications for nonprofit status submitted by conservative Christian groups and normalized an agency-wide policy of targeting religious groups for audits. Enter Stockman.

Lerner was held in contempt for refusing to honor subpoena requests from Congress, and Texas Congressman Stockman initiated a campaign to "arrest Lois Lerner."

Within 2 weeks, the FBI showed up at Steve's door.

Steve later learned that Lerner was copied on emails initiating the FBI investigation against him, an investigation as politically motivated as the Soviet-style show trial which put him behind bars.

Stockman is being set up for death, as John points out:

Steve is now the only insulin-dependent diabetic over 60 remaining at FCI Beaumont, as all other elderly diabetic inmates have been, or are being, moved to home confinement, since it is impossible to social distance in prison.

The ongoing slowwalk of Steve's release, combined with active withholding of vital medications, e.g. his insulin, is attempted murder.

If Roger Stone had his prison sentence commuted by President Trump, Steve Stockman surely deserves compassionate release, if not commutation or pardon.