Former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick denied early release

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D), who was sentenced to 28 years in prison on corruption and fraud charges in 2013, will not be released to home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) said Tuesday.

State Reps. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo (D) and Karen Whitsett (D), who have personally appealed to President Trump to release Kilpatrick from Louisiana’s low security Oakdale Prison, claimed Kilpatrick would be released to his mother’s home in Georgia on June 10 due to a coronavirus outbreak at the facility.

However, late Tuesday, the BOP denied the claim, according to the Detroit Free Press.

“On Tuesday, May 26, 2020, the federal Bureau of Prisons reviewed and denied inmate Kwame Kilpatrick for home confinement. Mr. Kilpatrick remains incarcerated at the federal correctional institution in Oakdale, Louisiana,” the BOP said in a statement.

Gay-Dagnogo and Whitsett said Trump had personally assured them Kilpatrick would be released.

“I’m very disappointed and want to know why a sitting president would lie,” Gay-Dagnogo said, according to the newspaper.

Neither Kilpatrick’s attorney, Harold Gurewitz, nor U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider of the Eastern District of Michigan, had heard Kilpatrick was due to be released, according to the newspaper.

Attorney General William Barr in April ordered federal prisons experiencing outbreaks to release as many prisoners as possible to home confinement. Eight prisoners in the facility Kilpatrick is in had died of the virus as of last week.

Kilpatrick served as mayor of Detroit from 2002 to 2008, resigning after a separate conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice. He was later convicted in March 2013 on 24 federal felony charges, including wire fraud, racketeering and mail fraud. His earliest possible release date if given time off for good behavior is in 2037.

The Hill has reached out to the White House and the Justice Department for comment.