Sure looks like the Trump administration has something to hide if they’re going to these lengths! Via the Daily Beast:
Sam Mangel, a consultant for high-profile inmates including Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, told The Daily Beast Podcast that prison staff and inmates were explicitly warned not to speak a word about Maxwell—and that one prisoner who did leak information was swiftly removed without explanation.
“In this case with Ms. Maxwell, it is completely different,” Mangel said. “They were warned, the inmates and the staff were warned prior to her coming in that under no circumstances are they to disclose anything that happens with her or to her or surrounding her during her time at Bryan.”
According to Mangel, the warning wasn’t just lip service. One woman—who had a short sentence and happened to be a friend of one of Mangel’s clients—spoke to a journalist about Maxwell. That same night, she was removed from the facility.
“So you know for sure they have an AI system that is just looking for the name Maxwell,” Mangel said. “And as soon as this other inmate made the statement, she was whisked off that night to Houston Federal Detention Center, which is a maximum security facility. The sentiment is one of walking on ice.”
Mangel says the fear among staff is real. “They’re afraid, as the staff is afraid, to do anything wrong because they know that in order for her to have gotten there, the strings [were pulled] at the highest possible level.”
We know Maxwell was moved in August from a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas—a facility known for being a lot more comfortable.
The transfer raised eyebrows, and for good reason. It shouldn’t have happened at all, at least not under standard Bureau of Prisons policy. Because of her conviction, Maxwell had a public safety factor attached to her record—something that’s supposed to disqualify inmates from being housed in minimum-security facilities.
“Anything involving a sexual act is the most serious—or one of the most serious—public safety factors someone can have on them, and that specifically precludes an individual from serving their time in a camp,” Mangel said. “I’ve helped thousands of people… They will not waive that public safety factor. So getting your transfer to a camp is crazy.”
According to Mangel, the directive to move her didn’t come from prison administrators—it came from “well above their heads.”
Listen to the entire interview.
