Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said the Biden-Harris administration is “ignoring” the Trump-era criminal justice reform called the First Step Act (FSA) in order to keep conservatives, including former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, in prison.
Under the FSA, federal inmates can earn “good time credits” to reduce their sentence through behavior and participation in prison programs.
On Monday, The Star learned that Bannon accrued 10 days of good time credit toward an early release, which means that the former Trump advisor could have been released to home confinement on October 19 instead of his scheduled release date of October 29.
Darek Puzio, acting warden at the Federal Correctional Institute (FCI) in Danbury, Connecticut, where Bannon is serving a four-month sentence, confirmed that Bannon earned 10-time credits; however, he acknowledged that those credits “would typically be applied toward early transfer to supervision,” but noted that Bannon was not sentenced to any form of supervised release.
In addition, the warden explained that Bannon can only use his credits to secure a transfer to home confinement for the remainder of his sentence. However, he claimed there is insufficient time left in the former Trump advisor’s sentence to arrange such a transfer.
Pappert, who has reported extensively on Bannon’s case, pointed out the double standard surrounding the FSA, noting how the Left championed the bipartisan legislation at its time of passage while now, Democrats are “ignoring” the landmark criminal justice reform as a tool to keep conservatives in prison.
“Look, the First Step Act was a little bit controversial among some hardline conservatives, but it was a noble, wonderful thing to do. Now, as we can see how wonderful it is, because the Democrats are ignoring it to keep our side in prison,” Pappert explained on Tuesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Noting the Bureau of Prison’s lack of “competence” in enacting the FSA during the Biden-Harris administration, Pappert suggested the move may have been intentional so that the administration could use the lack of guidance surrounding the law to “persecute” individuals like Bannon.
“I think that this is really the incompetence of the Biden-Harris administration that they’ve been attempting to hide behind this entire last four years, and now it’s being used to persecute their political opponents,” Pappert explained.
In regards to the political optics surrounding the Biden-Haris administration’s refusal to enact the FSA in not only Bannon’s case but other cases across the nation, Pappert said the situation is a “massive issue” for Harris going into the November 5 general election.
“I think that this is a massive issue for Kamala Harris going into this election, where she spent the last two weeks desperately guilting black and hispanic men into voting for her. She knows that she is doing poorly with this demographic. She knows that they’re disproportionately represented in the federal prison system, and she knows that they’re not going to vote for her on Election Day,” Pappert said.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Steve Bannon” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
