Pat Stedman was released from federal prison on October 27, 2024, after serving a year behind bars for his presence in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Stedman was in Washington, D.C., that day to protest 2020 election fraud and to petition Congress to vote against certifying the election prematurely in order to give the various swing states the opportunity to investigate voting irregularities, as was requested by numerous members of their legislatures.
While Stedman followed the crowd into the Capitol and shouted along with them, he did not engage in any violence.
Nonetheless, he was sentenced to 48 months for a felony offense, obstruction of an official proceeding — an Enron-era financial crimes law that theJustice Department weaponized against January 6 protesters.
Stedman was released early following the Supreme Court's ruling that prosecutors had applied the obstruction law — originally meant to target the destruction of evidence — too broadly.
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Just under two weeks ago I was released from federal prison, one year to the day that I came in. Here are 10 things I learned in this crucible.
In the civilian world, everyone feels entitled to say what they want, and most people take offense when others don’t agree with them. We live in an outrage culture that thrives on people spouting off on each other. This is basically X.
In prison, this kind of behavior isn’t wise. Unless asked, you keep quiet about your opinions and learn to tolerate others. You don’t provoke them. Arguments turn violent frequently. If you want to be right, prepare to fight.
And don’t get me started on the knives people make. The human mind placed under pressure is capable of incredible ingenuity.
Prison was one of the most respectful environments I’ve been in. More respectful than a country club.
Everyone says “excuse me” or “my bad” when passing by someone or interrupting a conversation. You hold doors for others. Entitled behavior is punished. The higher security the prison, the more dangerous it gets. Even moving someone’s chair without asking can lead to violence.
But it's easy to avoid conflict. If you stay out of ego and treat people with respect, you will have few problems.
No lighter and want to smoke a cigarette? Two batteries and a wire will do the trick. Want to cook but no stove or microwave? You can boil water in a bucket with two cables wrapped around a metal slab plugged into an outlet.
I’ve even seen a convection oven built out of soda cans and loose wires. And don’t get me started on the knives people make. The human mind placed under pressure is capable of incredible ingenuity.
After long stretches in prison, even strong men start to lose it. In some cases it’s obvious — people talking to themselves. But in most cases it’s more subtle. Looping conversations. Pacing the room back and forth constantly. Hoarding junk. Easily stressed by inconveniences. Paranoid.
Long lockdowns, boring routines, and constant assaults on humanity by guards can bring you down to an animal-like level. Some people come in like this. But most are made this way by the conditions. There's a term for it: "institutionalized."
The two classes of offenders at the bottom of the totem pole in prison are chomos (“child molesters,” used as a catch-all term for all sex offenders) and rats. It is very important that you have your prisoner "paperwork" to prove that you're not one of them.
Fort Dix is a dumping ground for these types of prisoners, so they are allowed on the yard, unlike in higher-security prisons. But they are still the bottom of the totem pole and are disproportionately targeted for extortion and robbery.
Rats in particular are despised, which is understandable considering that most inmates are in prison because of them. Have your paperwork ready, or keep a low profile and stick to where you're allowed.
Prison is a tribal environment. You are categorized immediately based on your ethnicity and filtered accordingly into “cars.”
White guys have their table. Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, etc. each have their own as well.
Black guys organize based on geography, i.e. New York, Pennsylvania, Carolina. You can join their car even if you aren’t black, but it only happens rarely, usually if the guy in question also came from “the hood.”
The separation creates stability; the differences are apparent and universally recognized.
But respect is color-blind. There are dirtbags in every race as well as honorable men. The good men are friendly with each other regardless of background. Conflict between cars is uncommon and avoided at all costs. It's called "crashing out," and gets ugly. To avoid this, troublemakers are policed by their own.
Fort Dix was real prison to me. But to guys who came from the higher-security institutions, it wasn’t.
You could go outside regularly. There weren’t bars on your cell doors. Even during lockdowns, you could still move around the building, use phones and computers, sometimes even watch TV.
I came to appreciate little things a lot. Being able to go to the gym, a little extra food at the chow hall, getting your comissary early, an unlocked door so you could move around easier — these all felt like “freedom.”
The abundance we have on the outside is amazing. After this year, something as simple as bread with butter and jam tasted like heaven to me.
After two days back in the “real world,” I was absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of information we receive. In prison, I had no access to the internet and limited communication with the outside world.
I didn’t scroll through feeds or messages. I talked to people or read. I was focused and present, had real conversations, actually learned some things. I can already feel the siren song of distraction calling me since I’ve been back.
Honestly, I prefer the clarity I had in there to the deluge of nonsense out here. There is something wrong with the way we are living. It's not healthy or natural, and that explains so much of our growing social dysfunction.
Being around high-testosterone men 24/7, you become very attuned to even the slightest amount of feminine energy in the environment. Everyone notices female guards, even if they don’t gawk at them.
Little flourishes of femininity go a long way. You can almost smell it before you see it. I remember staring at my wife during visits, intoxicated by her presence. This was about more than just sex. The way her hair fell on her shoulder, the way she moved. Everything about her was refreshing — I just wanted to take it all in.
My first few weeks in prison were tough. There were a lot of rules I didn’t understand that I had to learn. And to put it lightly, it was a very different environment to get used to, with very different types of people.
But then all of a sudden, all this newness became normal. I was living in a ghetto behind barbed-wire fences, and there wasn’t anything weird about it. I’d fist-bump gangsters and sneak apples out of the chow hall in my socks, as if this was just a part of life.
It’s still surreal for me to look back on it. I just left this world. And it already feels like a dream.
Two convicted pedophiles died roughly within an hour of each other in an upstate New York prison last week. One of the inmates who was found dead was convicted of drugging, raping, and murdering a 3-year-old girl.
According to the state's Department of Corrections, 34-year-old Robert Fisher was pronounced dead at approximately 1:50 a.m. Oct. 22 at the Elmira Correctional Facility in Chemung County.
'He drugged her, went into her bedroom and raped her.'
WRGB-TV reported that 59-year-old William Brand was pronounced dead at approximately 2:52 a.m. Oct. 22.
The County Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet announced the cause of death for either inmate.
Both were admitted into the prison within the last month. Records indicate that Brand was admitted Oct. 10; Fisher was admitted Sept. 23.
Fisher admitted to drugging, raping, and murdering 3-year-old Josefina Cunningham and was convicted of his crimes in July 2023. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in September.
Rensselaer County Assistant District Attorney Antonia Edwards said during Fisher's sentencing, "The heinous acts of the defendant took Josie away from this world and this community. This community also deserves to know what horrible and vile acts this defendant committed and the absolute horror Josie met when she came home from day care on July 6, 2023, into July 7, 2023."
Fisher used prescription drugs from Josefina's mother — Laquesha Cunningham — to drug the 3-year-old girl before raping her.
“The defendant took the medication prescribed to Laquesha, crushed it up, and put it in a cup for Josie to drink. He drugged her, went into her bedroom and raped her,” Edwards said. “He did all of this while she was alive and awake; we only know that now because of the autopsy results."
Edwards added, "Seeing the pictures of Josie's face after what the defendant did to her was mortifying. Those images will be ingrained into the minds forever for those who saw them."
Brand was convicted of sexually abusing a child under the age of 11.
The New York State Police said in a statement that Brand was arrested in April 2024 and charged with predatory sexual assault against a child, second-degree course of sexual conduct against a child, and first-degree course of sexual conduct against a child. Authorities noted that Brand had inappropriate sexual contact multiple times with a child.
Brand was serving a 10-year prison sentence.
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The Biden-Harris Department of Justice prosecuted former Trump adviser and "War Room" host Stephen K. Bannon for actions that Democrats — including Attorney General Merrick Garland and former Attorney General Eric Holder — have similarly executed but without consequence.
Bannon, ultimately convicted in 2022 for supposed contempt of Congress, is scheduled to be released Tuesday from the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, where he has been sidelined for the past four months.
Bannon's allies have been counting the days until he could resume the work of championing the MAGA movement. Some of his critics have similarly been counting the days, albeit with concern over the possibility that he might prove effective once again in mobilizing Republican voters in the final days before the election — after all, Bannon's podcast ranks in the top 30 on Apple's U.S. political list.
"My Dad is a political prisoner of Nancy Pelosi, Merrick Garland, and the corrupt Biden-Harris regime," Bannon's adult daughter, Army veteran, and WarRoom CEO Maureen Bannon, noted on X. "They wanted to silence him and shut down the WarRoom by putting him in Danbury FCI, but all they did was make WarRoom and the Posse bigger, stronger, and more unstoppable!"
"His return will be EPIC!" continued Maureen Bannon. "UNLEASH THE HONEY BADGER!"
Speaking with the titular host of "The Todd Starnes Show" over the weekend, Maureen Bannon indicated that her father's message to "America first conservatives" ahead of his release was to "get out and vote."
"It's very frightening that the Democrats are the ones who say that President Trump, when he is re-elected, will be the one to throw his opponents or anyone that doesn’t agree with him in prison," said Bannon's daughter. "That’s exactly what the left is doing. They did it for Peter Navarro. They put him in prison for four months. They put my dad in prison for four months. This should wake everyone up."
'Don't pray for me. Pray for our enemies.'
"Bannon becomes the new Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn — but for America — tomorrow, October 29, 2024. Soviet Communism's poster child of political persecution," said Jeff Clark, a former assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice's environment and natural resources division.
"He will have withstood being a political prisoner only to emerge, fully energized, and at the top of his game on the eve of the most important election of our lifetimes, where we roll back the tide of Communism for at least another four years or we risk the destruction of the Republic and its conversion, through the border invasion, censorship, and oppression, into a one-party monopoly," added Clark.
Myra Adams, a writer who worked on the late John McCain's campaign in 2008, expressed trepidation, noted in an op-ed for The Hill, "Bannon’s release, with its movie-like timing, will be a Hollywood ending to modern America’s wildest and contentious [sic] presidential campaign. In the last week, Bannon could motivate Trump’s base as a 'poster child' for his well-versed judicial weaponization and retribution themes."
Adams noted further:
Bannon will likely juice Trump’s get-out-the-vote effort to 'save America' from ruin. In the distorted MAGA mindset, that means only Trump can stop bloated, wasteful government, domestic fascism, economic collapse, the migrant invasion, wokeism and anti-Christianity. Only Trump can reduce inflation and the national debt, increase energy production and end foreign entanglements
Bannon was convicted in July 2022 of two charges of contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas from the Democrat-controlled House Select committee investigating the Jan. 6 protests.
Around the time of Bannon's sentencing, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck said, "Do you recognize your country anymore? We used to be a nation of fundamental rights granted to us by God, and we lived under a system of laws that promised justice. Not social justice, but justice justice. Can I ask you what American justice even means anymore?"
"Was it justice when Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress? We've seen people defy Congress for decades, but no one ever goes to jail," continued Beck. "The last time someone went to jail for this was back in 1961. Before that ... 1948! It's rare, even though we've seen people openly defy Congress time after time."
'Every second will count.'
Christopher Bedford, senior editor for politics and Washington correspondent for Blaze Media, said at the time, "It paints a pretty clear picture of the DOJ's priorities that you're seeing Steve Bannon actually go to prison for contempt of Congress while so many others have slipped by."
Bannon reported to prison on July 1 after filing unsuccessful appeals to a full panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals and to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Before turning himself in, Bannon told a crowd of supporters outside the prison, "I am proud to go to prison. If this is what it takes to stand up to tyranny, if this is what it takes to stand up to the Garland corrupt criminal DOJ, if this is what it takes to stand up to Nancy Pelosi, if this is what it takes to stand up to Joe Biden, ... I'm proud to do it."
Ahead of receiving a blessing from a priest and invoking the help of St. Michael the Archangel, Bannon said, "Father, don't pray for me. Pray for our enemies."
Bannon's prison consultant, Sam Mangel, told CNN that during his stint, the "War Room" host first worked in the library then began teaching history and civics to his fellow inmates.
Fred Carrasco Jr., a prisoner serving more than a decade at Danbury, told NOTUS, "It's awesome the s**t this guy knows."
Peter Navarro, Trump's former White House trade adviser who also did time for a contempt of Congress conviction, noted Monday, "Every time they call us fascists, remember they put me and Bannon in prison for defending the Constitution, bankrupted Rudy, took away the bar cards of Clark and Eastman, and want @realDonaldTrump in jail for the rest of his life. Kamala Campaign desperate and desperately woke and wrong."
Raheem Kassam, Bannon ally and editor in chief of the National Pulse, told NOTUS, "I would not be surprised to see him immediately hitting the campaign trail, as well as hosting his 'War Room' show for four hours each day. Every second will count. Every word will matter."
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