Inmates at the “Club Fed” women’s federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas are allowed to shop at the commissary once a week and are always sure to stock up on rolls of Scott toilet paper that cost $2.25 each, a resource they zealously guard from others, according to CNN’s sources at the joint.
“You don’t understand the value of toilet paper in prison. It is hoarded. It is hidden from staff,” said Sam Mangel, a former federal prison inmate turned consultant with clients currenty at Bryan. “If you think about it, you can go without shampoo for a day or two. You can’t go without toilet paper.”
However there’s one inmate who does not face the same supply chain issue: Dirty Jeff’s main accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who gets as much as she wants for free. This is on top of all her other privileges like her own private cell without the usual three other inmates, private meetings with visitors in the chapel with snacks supplied by prison staff, and extra attention from guards.
At first glance maybe the toilet paper detail isn’t really adding to the picture that previous reporting on Maxwell’s time in Club Fed over the last few months did not. However something sticks out in CNN’s story that wasn’t in the Wall Street Journal, NBC, etc’s previous reporting on the situation, all seemingly sourced from inmates’ spouses or lawyers or maybe rank and file prison staff.
It’s this passage, right after an anodyne non-denial statement from the BOP: “Another Trump administration official said that some of the details of Maxwell’s treatment at Bryan – including being able to use the prison’s chapel for private meetings – were ‘necessary’ for ensuring the safety of Maxwell as well as that of her fellow inmates. The official also noted that Maxwell’s meals were delivered to her cell for a period of a month, and that she was no longer eating her meals alone.”
Now focus less on the specifics of what this “Trump administration official” told CNN and instead on the fact that they even talked to a reporter about it at all. Compare it to the situation with that Bill Pulte cock knob and the stupid 50-year mortgage shitshow, where his enemies in that snake pit ran to Politico to tell them how fucking outraged they were that Fannie Man was pouring poison into the ear of their principal. That Trump posted about it before his handlers could weigh in and talk him out of acting as Pulte’s mouthpiece, just the latest in a string of intrasquad fights involving the jerkoff.
Even by the dysfunctional standards of the Trump Administration there was something very normal and natural about that. They already hate Pulte so use Politico’s eagerness for content – especially about infighting – to knife him just a little more, push him a little closer to the edge of the table, and so on. Sure it makes the Trump team look bad overall but if it hastens Pulte’s downfall then hell yes.
That’s not what’s happening here with Maxwell’s treatment and there’s an argument that this is borderline malpractice by CNN to have been able to get ANYONE in the Trump Regime to talk about the situation, quoting them anonymously in a limited hangout acknowledging that there was special treatment but it was all in the name of “safety.” Set aside whether that was a self-fulfilling prophecy when a notorious convicted sex offender is moved to a facility that does not permit such inmates to reside there. That a white collar convict like Elizabeth Holmes behaves and refrains from shanking other inmates on the yard because that’s the code of conduct she and her cellmates abide by for the privilege of doing her time in a relatively nicer, cleaner, safer place than real federal prisons.
Toilet paper access is not a safety issue (or maybe it is if other inmates who have to pay for it come to resent one who does not). Free snacks for her visitors is not a safety issue. Custom vegetarian meals is not a safety issue. Being allowed to use the warden’s computer and printer to crank out a formal application for commutation is not a safety issue. Another inmate getting transferred to a regular federal prison just for talking to the press via her husband is not a safety issue.
Did it EVER occur to this CNN reporter to say “Okay, thanks for the quote on the safety thing, this is good copy. Cool. But since I’ve got you on the phone, can you tell me what the fuck is going on and why Maxwell got transferred at all and why so many other very obviously non-safety-related adjustments have been made for her? Because we still have yet to hear from literally anyone inside the administration on this in five months and it looks very goddamned suspicious to a lot of people”?
“Oh and why did Julie Howell get transferred out of Club Fed?” the reporter also should’ve asked.