With the presidential election fast approaching, one of Donald Trump’s most supportive media personalities, Steve Bannon, is set to return to the fold as a wildcard in the final week of voting.
Read More
Conservative podcaster and former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon was released from prison Tuesday morning.
Read More
As the district attorney for San Francisco, Kamala Harris ran a city program that kept criminal illegal immigrants out of prison by training them for jobs they could not legally have.
Read More
Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Scott Golden said President Joe Biden’s performance during Thursday’s CNN debate against former President Donald Trump “puts pressure” on New York Judge Juan Merchan to sentence Trump to prison on July 11.
Read More
A United States court of appeals on Thursday rejected Steve Bannon’s request to delay the start of his prison sentence, ruling that he must report to serve the contempt of Congress sentence on July 1.
Read More
Six pro-life activists were found guilty of blocking access to an abortion clinic on Tuesday and could face a sentence of up to 11 years in prison, according to a press release from the Thomas More Society.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged 11 pro-life activists in October 2022 with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services,” for blocking the entrance of an abortion clinic in March 2021. A jury ruled that the six defendants were guilty after a six-day trial at the Fred D. Thompson U.S. Courthouse in Nashville, Tennessee, according to the press release.
Read More
Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders signed a bill Tuesday to stop criminals in prison for rape, first-degree murder, human trafficking and some other felony offenses committed after 2024 from being released early.
The Protect Arkansas Act will make those who commit any of 24 felonies including rape, aggravated robbery and child pornography possession ineligible for parole and require people incarcerated for a variety of other felony crimes like manslaughter and fentanyl delivery committed in 2025 or later to serve at least 85 percent of their court-assigned sentences. Sanders signed the act surrounded by law enforcement personnel, and tweeted, “The failed public safety status quo ends today in Arkansas.”
Read More
I must have seen “The Shawshank Redemption” at least a hundred times. It was an ubiquitous staple of college life in the late 1990s, like “Friends” or The Dave Matthews Band. It’s the story of a young banker, Andy Dufresene (Tim Robbins), who tries to preserve his humanity and his hope while serving a life sentence after being wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover.
In the middle of the movie an elderly prisoner, Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore), holds another inmate hostage at knifepoint. After Andy defuses the situation it is revealed that, after 50 years in prison, Brooks will be paroled. Brooks had spent his entire adult life in prison, and he didn’t want to leave, so he reasoned that by committing another crime he could remain in prison. While Brooks’ would-be victim surmises that Brooks is simply crazy, Andy’s best friend, “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), has a different explanation: “He’s just . . . just institutionalized.”
Read More
A Democrat-appointed federal judge opened the door to allowing more males to be housed in women’s prisons Tuesday by ruling that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) covers people with gender dysphoria.
Kesha Williams, a biologically male former inmate who identifies as a transgender woman, sued several people associated with the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center in Virginia for allegedly violating the ADA in their decision to house Williams with men, according to court documents. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, a Clinton appointee, sided with Williams and rejected a lower court’s dismissal of the initial lawsuit.
Read More
The Department of Justice invested almost $1.5 million of taxpayer dollars into a “transgender programming curriculum” focused on transgender inmates’ needs.
The curriculum is designed to help transgender inmates with their gender “identity,” sexual health and safety, according to a summary of the government contract. Though it’s unclear if the curriculum has been implemented, the program could be available for up to 1,200 transgender inmates, according to Justice Department estimates.
Read More
A judge on Monday sentenced Ghislaine Maxwell to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and other charges in connection with her recruiting and grooming minors for the pleasure of then-boyfriend financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Read More
Attorney Michael Avenatti was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for defrauding ex-porn star Stormy Daniels, a former client whose legal wrangling with then-President Trump made Avenatti a popular albeit brief cable news celebrity for bashing Trump.
Read More
The Biden administration has allowed a more than eleven-fold increase in the number of illegal immigrant offenders let out of Texas prisons and into the general U.S. population, despite federal immigration law requiring ICE to take convicts into custody after serving their time, usually in advance of deportation.
The disclosure emerges from state-initiated litigation that is beginning to shed light on what critics call the administration’s secretive and lenient handling of immigrants beginning last year – treatment that is imperiling public safety, alarmed state authorities say.
Read More
As West Coast states deal with the fallout of putting anatomically male inmates in women’s prisons, the East Coast is looking to join the club.
Maryland is considering legislation similar to a California law that lets inmates choose their correctional facility based on self-declared gender identity, an option that concerned even transgender inmates in the Golden State.
A purported draft executive order by President Joe Biden would do the same to federal prisons, prompting GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas to introduce opposing legislation.
Read More
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) on Thursday said he thinks Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, should go to prison for five years for lying to Congress. The Kentucky senator has repeatedly sparred with the NIAID director over the funding of gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab.
“Fauci should go to prison for five years for lying to Congress. They’ve prosecuted other people, they’ve selectively gone after Republicans, but in no way will they do anything about him lying,” he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business.
Read More
Democratic Govs. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Gavin Newsom of California, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan shatter everything they touch. Ron DeSantis, conversely, seems to get everything right. The Florida Republican has emerged as America’s governor.
“We’re standing with our folks. We’re going to do the right thing. We leaned into it, and we stood strong,” DeSantis told Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently.
Rather than snip a tax, kill a regulation, and then doze off, as too many Republicans have done, DeSantis is a tireless, full-spectrum conservative. He has authorized a host of economic, cultural, and law enforcement initiatives that are buoying Florida and transforming him into the Great Right Hope.
Read More
Disgraced former attorney Michael Avenatti was sentenced Thursday to 30 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release for trying to extort millions from the sportswear company Nike.
The former media gadfly and anti-Trump resistance hero reportedly cried in court as he made a statement thanking his family. According to Washington Post reporter Devlin Barrett, Avenatti admitted “I and I alone have destroyed my career, my relationships, my life, and there is no doubt that I deserve to pay, have paid, and will pay a further price for what I have done.”
Read More
Advocates for incarcerated women are calling on California political and correctional leaders to halt and reverse the transfer of male-to-female transgender and nonbinary prisoners into the state’s women’s prisons.
Read More
Song Guo Zheng, a former professor and researcher at Ohio State University, will spend 37 months in prison after being convicted of lying about his ties to the Chinese government on applications for NIH grant funding and failing to disclose his China ties to his employers. Zheng will also be required to pay roughly $413,000 to Ohio State University and $3.4 million to the National Institutes of Health.
“Zheng pleaded guilty last November and admitted he lied on applications in order to use approximately $4.1 million in grants from NIH to develop China’s expertise in the areas of rheumatology and immunology,” said the DOJ when it announced the sentencing.
Zheng’s teaching and scholarship were in the medical field, with emphasis on rheumatology and immunology at Ohio State University. Zheng’s researcher biography states that he has also taught at the University of Southern California and Penn State University.
Read More
Governor Ralph Northam will sign a bill granting earned sentence credits to violent offenders and sexual predators. Certain inmates will be eligible to reduce their sentencing by up to fifty percent.
The bill, House Bill (HB) 5148, includes those sentenced for certain classifications of murder, rape, robbery, abduction, kidnapping, lynching, terrorism, domestic assault, strangulation, genital mutilation, child pornography, and stalking.
Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, once one of the most powerful politicians in the state, started his prison sentence Wednesday after years of fending off going behind bars.
Silver, 76, reported to a federal prison in Otisville, New York, according to a statement from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He was sentenced earlier this year to 6 1/2 years behind bars in a corruption case.
Read More
Coronavirus-related deaths in prisons and correctional facilities have reportedly increased by nearly 75% since mid-May, according to The New York Times.
Coronavirus-related deaths in prisons increased 73% since mid-May totaling at least 607, according to the NYT’s database. The highest number of confirmed prison COVID-19 cases have been at Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio (2,439).
Read More
Attorney Michael Avenatti might have violated terms of his temporary release from jail again, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Central District of California said in a filing made Sunday that Avenatti, who represented porn star Stormy Daniels, might have used his friend’s computer to write and file five different documents, according to CNN.
Read More