A quietly issued Bureau of Prisons policy change is drawing sharp scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers and former officials who say it hands acting Attorney General Todd Blanche sweeping authority over federal prisons they fear could be used to reward allies and punish adversaries.
The May 6 revision, issued under Blanche's supervision while he served as acting attorney general, allows him to personally designate an inmate's place of imprisonment, which critics told The Bulwark shifts a decision that traditionally belonged to career Bureau of Prisons officials into the hands of a single political appointee.
“The change that was made here is just absolutely stunning in scope and potential impact,” said former Justice Department pardon attorney Liz Oyer, who testified against Blanche and first broke the news of the policy shift. "[The change] essentially gives the attorney general the authority to override the entire [116-page classification] manual at his complete discretion.”
The controversy gained fresh urgency in light of Ghislaine Maxwell's transfer to a minimum-security prison camp last year — a facility with amenities including a service animal and customized meals — just a week after Blanche personally interviewed her about her ties to Jeffrey Epstein, a longtime associate of President Donald Trump.
Former senior Bureau of Prisons officials say Maxwell is the only one of more than 20,000 federal sex offenders to receive such placement, and that agency standards were specifically designed to keep sex offenders out of minimum-security camps.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), one of several lawmakers who pressed the Bureau of Prisons over the change, argued the stakes extend well beyond Maxwell's case and warned the change turned prisons into another political weapon for the president.
“The moment that political favoritism governs the conditions of confinement, then everyone immediately tries to curry favor with the people in power,” Raskin said. “It’s a return to monarchical and feudal relationships, where it’s all about the fury or the mercy of the king. . . . That’s what confinement is like in authoritarian societies.”
The Bureau of Prisons has pushed back, publicly stating the Maxwell decision was made independently with no political influence, and telling reporters the policy was meant to formalize authority the attorney general already held amid unrelated litigation over death-row commutations.
But a spokesperson could not explain how the policy would satisfy a federal requirement that prisoners of high social status not receive favoritism, nor could the agency provide examples of comparable transfers to support its claim that Maxwell's case wasn't unprecedented.
In written responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blanche said he would not use the authority for political purposes but offered no specific safeguards against favoritism, and did not address the death-penalty litigation the Bureau cited as its rationale.
Rep. Deborah Ross (D-NC) said the timing — more than a year after the administration began exercising similar authority, and only after intense scrutiny of Maxwell's case — undercuts DOJ's explanation, and she is now considering legislation to restore exclusive prison placement authority to career Bureau of Prisons officials.
“If this change was simply meant to reflect existing authority, why was it adopted more than a year after the Trump administration began exercising that authority and only after it was facing litigation and intense public scrutiny over Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer to a lower security facility?” Ross said.
