Former GOP Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas has contracted COVID-19 after repeated requests for release to home confinement were denied.
Stockman, 63, has served over two years of a 10-year sentence at the federal prison in Beaumont, Texas, for felony campaign-finance and related violations.
Local CBS News affiliate KFDM reported there has been a COVID outbreak at the facility, and family members of inmates had expressed concerns about inmates being housed with those who have tested positive for the virus.
Patti Stockman, the former congressman’s wife, told the news outlet that 28 prisoners in her husband’s unit had tested positive and he was among them. In a text message to The Western Journal, Patti said her husband was informed of his test result Thursday night.
According to the Bureau of Prisons, there are 35 active COVID-19 cases at the Beaumont prison’s low-security facility.
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In an April interview with The Western Journal, Patti noted her husband had multiple risk factors for COVID, including Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, scarring of his lungs from asthma and being overweight.
In an email to supporters Saturday, she wrote that because of the KFDM story, Steve was taken the next day to a local hospital for treatment as an outpatient.
He received an IV of the antibiotic azithromycin, an inhaler of Albuterol sulfate to take back to the prison, and prescriptions for azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine, according to Patti.
However, she wrote, “The prison indicated they may not be able to fill the Rx’s for him and, last I knew, they were ‘working on it!’ “
Is the ‘deep state’ preventing Stockman’s release?
In April, Patti told The Western Journal that Steve was informed he was being released to home confinement as part of a policy announced by U.S. Attorney General William Barr “for combatting the dangers that COVID-19 poses to our vulnerable inmates.”
When he showed up at the appointed time and place to begin his 14-day quarantine before being released, an official informed him his name had been pulled from the list, according to his wife.
The Bureau of Prisons confirmed in an email to The Western Journal at the time, “Staff at FCC Beaumont are currently reviewing all inmates for their suitability for home confinement or compassionate release.”
Conservative commentator Richard Viguerie argued in an op-ed published by The Western Journal earlier this month that Stockman has been sentenced to “death” by the prison bureau’s refusal to release him.
Viguerie cited a report that said over 70,000 people have been released from prison due to the threat of COVID-19, and the only reason Stockman has not is clearly political.
Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney to President Donald Trump, is among those who have been released.
Viguerie highlighted that Stockman’s convictions are non-violent, and non-sex crimes, which should make him more than eligible to be transferred out of the Beaumont facility to home confinement.
“All this stinks, of course, and fits with the larger exposure of how the corrupt deep state under the Obama administration and the corrupt Clinton rein at the State Department used nefarious government tactics to target their political enemies,” Viguerie argued.
“Steve Stockman was an outspoken critic of their corruption, and now someone in Washington’s deep state wants their political prisoner to die in jail when instead he should be released to home detention.”
KFDM reported the family members of inmates being held at the Beaumont prison plan to hold a protest outside of the facility on Sunday.
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