Week three in prison.
The weight of those words alone is enough to knock the wind out of me.
Yet here I am, living it, breathing it, and confronting the harsh reality every single day.
No amount of denial or wishful thinking can erase where I find myself. I went from standing at the pinnacle of power and prestige, attending galas, navigating multimillion-dollar fundraisers in glittering Manhattan apartments and Long Island mansions, to the rock bottom of federal confinement. It has been a fall played out for the world to see.
And let me tell you this: some people are reveling in it, almost celebrating my downfall like it’s a sport.
Others, quietly and steadfastly, are rooting for me to rise again. In between those extremes, I am simply trying to survive mentally, emotionally, and physically. Ironically, one small grace has emerged in this strange chapter of my life: the people I’ve found myself surrounded by. Against all odds, I’m sharing space with men who, despite our circumstances, maintain a sense of normalcy in our conversations.
We aren’t hardened criminals. We aren’t career inmates.
For the most part, we are individuals who stumbled, fell, and are trying to figure out the next step forward. Perhaps most surreal of all is that my dorm mate is none other than Sam Miele.
Yes, the same Sam who once stood beside me at high-end fundraisers.
Today, instead of discussing campaign strategy in penthouses and estate living rooms, we find ourselves reflecting on the past while lying on prison bunks. We talk openly about our so-called “fall from grace,” but we also talk about rebuilding, about the future, about proving that this is not our final chapter.
At least, I pray it isn’t. Still, even with camaraderie, reality bites, and sometimes it burns.
This past week has been unbearable in the most literal sense of the word. The government has many inefficiencies, but no one could have convinced me that being slowly baked alive in a metal warehouse was part of the experience.
Imagine fifty men jammed together in a makeshift dormitory, with temperatures rarely dipping below 85 degrees and often soaring into the 90s.
No relief, no reprieve, just suffocating, relentless heat.
I have begged, pleaded, and filed every request imaginable for the administration to fix the air conditioning. Yet here we remain, cooking in conditions that are not just uncomfortable but dangerous.
The building itself is hardly fit for long-term habitation: sheet metal walls, shoddy construction, the look and feel of a temporary warehouse rather than a permanent facility.
On my first night, I discovered a gaping tear in the vinyl ceiling six feet long and four feet wide, exposing thick black mold overhead.
After weeks of raising the alarm and pointing out my increased reliance on my albuterol inhaler, what was the solution?
A maintenance officer came by and simply covered it up. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
Except the heat doesn’t go away. The mold doesn’t disappear.
And the toll on our health keeps mounting. Breathing becomes a daily struggle.
Sleep, once a refuge, is now a luxury. On most nights, I scrape together four, maybe five restless hours before the suffocating air jolts me awake.
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America states clearly that “cruel and unusual punishment” is forbidden.
Now, I may be an inmate, but I am also an American. Every man in here is still entitled to basic rights and basic dignity.
To ignore those rights in the name of bureaucratic incompetence is nothing short of unconstitutional. And let me be clear: the fantasy stories of “Club Fed,” the supposed cushy lifestyle of federal inmates, are nothing but lies. Hogwash.
A myth for the uninformed.
The truth is that I am living through a broken system, rotting facilities, and administrators who seem incapable or unwilling to correct it.
If there’s one silver lining, it’s the correctional officers on the ground. Many of them do their best under impossible circumstances, showing professionalism in the face of an administration that appears to have abandoned both staff and inmates. But they are not the decision-makers.
The people who are supposed to run this facility responsibly—the ones at the top are failing miserably. And it is the men inside, along with the officers tasked with keeping order, who pay the price.
I refuse to be silent. I refuse to sit quietly and accept this as my reality without shining a light on it. Each week, I will continue to document my experience, my struggles, and my observations, because the American people deserve to know the truth about how their government treats its prisoners. This is my own personal hell, but it is also a fight.
And if I know one thing about myself, it is that I don’t back down.