Oh, my God, this may be the most 2020 story ever.
Best newspaper graphic ever
Former U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, who is serving a 10-year federal prison stint for a complex campaign corruption scheme, is seeking a presidential pardon amid the growing coronavirus pandemic.
The 63-year-old Clear Lake Republican firebrand is serving his sentence at a low-security facility in Beaumont where the Bureau of Prisons has yet to report any cases. His wife, Patti Stockman, however, states in a video made April 1 that her husband said the first case had been diagnosed at an adjoining federal prison in Beaumont.
His wife made a plea this week, along with several former cabinet members, ex-congressmembers and other evangelical and conservative officials, for compassionate release, saying he is among the nonviolent “sitting ducks” who are especially vulnerable and should be pardoned. They add that Stockman could die if exposed due to diabetes and lung scarring as a result of asthma. He is also overweight and has high blood pressure, his wife said.
A petition by 50 conservative leaders calls Stockman “a perfect example of a prisoner who fits criteria of who should be removed from prison.” The letter notes his “intense Christian faith,” and “the extreme length of the judge’s sentence,” and says he is not eligible for release under the First Step Act.
[…]
Jeffrey Crouch, an American University professor who wrote a book on presidential pardons, said the appeal is not falling on deaf ears.
“Former Rep. Stockman is a high-profile Republican and a convicted white-collar offender who enjoys support for presidential mercy from a list of leading conservatives,” Crouch said. “If President Trump decided to pardon him, the decision would fit in well with others Trump has made regarding who should receive clemency.”
Crouch noted, “What is unusual here is the presence of the COVID-19 pandemic: Trump might now have political cover to use clemency as an act of mercy to assist Stockman and perhaps others in a similar position.”
There’s an embed of a video made by Mrs. Stockman to Trump in the story that I didn’t have the stomach to click on. What one can’t achieve by legal means, try to get by appealing to the vanity of the nation’s leading grifter, from one of his loyal acolytes. Meanwhile, there are thousands of people around the country in jails who haven’t been convicted of anything and whose release as a way of mitigating the risk of further spread of COVID-19 is being zealously opposed by “conservative leaders” like these. Yep, this is 2020 boiled down to a concentrated essence. If it doesn’t work for Stockman it will only be because Trump was too distracted by other, shinier objects.
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