LISA Newsletter for August 31, 2026 – Joshua Smith Takes His BOP Job and Shoves It
LISA publishes a free newsletter intended for inmate subscribers in the Federal system and interested readers in the outside world.
Edited by Thomas L Root, MA JD
Vol 12, No 33
<><>
Smith Packs It In After A Year at the BOP
Here’s Why DOJ’s Gun Right Restoration Stinks
J6 BOP Prisoner Gets Pardon, Then Sues FCI Elkton For Lousy Medical Care
Sentencing Commission Dreams Big, Disappoints Those Who Would Just Like a Little Progress
Alice Says, ‘Don’t Get Scammed’
<><>
SMITH PACKS IT IN AFTER A YEAR AT THE BOP
Bureau of Prisons Deputy Director Joshua Smith, pardoned for a drug offense that happened 30 years ago, abruptly announced last Monday he was leaving the agency without giving a reason.
After his release from prison a quarter century ago, Smith built a Knoxville-based service company into a multimillion business while using it and a foundation he started to give recently released inmates employment and support in staying out of trouble.
In a post from his personal X account, Smith thanked President Trump for the chance to serve as BOP’s second in command, an opportunity available because Trump pardoned him in 2021:
Three decades ago, I walked through the gates of a federal prison as an inmate. Years later, after receiving a presidential pardon, I was given the opportunity to walk back through those gates as Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, serving the very President that gave me that pardon. For that, I will always be grateful to President Donald J. Trump.
By all accounts, Smith’s leadership at the BOP was unconventional. He became part of BOP Director William K. Marshall III’s leadership team that pushed an agency Walter Pavlo described last week as “known for incremental change” toward a different management philosophy. “During their time together,” Pavlo said of Marshall and Smith, “the Bureau changed how it selected leaders, challenged its longstanding relationship with the union representing BOP employees, began rewriting decades-old policies, secured significant funding to address deteriorating prisons, created teams to attack infrastructure and operational problems, and announced the closure or restructuring of several institutions.”
Smith traveled across the country to dozens of prisons – some visits being unannounced – and hosted a BOP-centric podcast called “Transparency Talks.” Smith helped transfer or replace about 70 pct of BOP executive staff — including several top wardens — and focus on leadership development. “At the end of the day,” he said, “bureaucracy is bureaucracy. I hope what I was able to do was at least start a fire there.”
Smith had a tense relationship with some BOP employees. A BOP union rep at FCI Hazelton, AFGE Local 420 Steward Jason Shaffer,said, “The deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, with a criminal history of his own, has stepped down from the post…. [Smith’s appointment was] a slap in our face. To have an inmate who was once housed in our prison who was running the U.S. Bureau of Prisons has devastated our country and greatly affected the staff who have worked hard for the BOP.”
CBS News, Bureau of Prisons No. 2 official who was pardoned for drug crimes abruptly departs (Aug 25)
Forbes, Josh Smith Abruptly Leaves Bureau of Prisons After Year of Changes (Aug 25)
WV Metro News, FCI Hazelton workers applaud resignation of BOP deputy director, former inmate (Aug 25)
<><>
HERE’S WHY DOJ’S GUN RIGHT RESTORATION STINKS
I reported last week that the Trump Administration has adopted final rules that permit some former felons who can jump through all of the hoops will be able to get their right to possess guns in compliance with 18 USC 922(g)(1) restored. I complained that the program may be a fig leaf that lets the Administration avoid a Supreme Court showdown over the 2nd Amendment and 18 USC 922(g) while deciding for itself whose 2nd Amendment rights will be honored and whose will be ignored.
If 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional as applied to some people despite their convictions, setting up a discretionary government process whereby the unconstitutionality may be corrected sometime in the future is hardly comforting. The government may as well set up a panel to decide that you can exercise your 1st Amendment rights to make statements or publish flyers after you submit to a bureaucratic review process.
Plus, when the government is the current administration, that doles out favors to supporters and people with money, the likelihood dims of a merit-based process.
If a conviction is insufficient to strip 2nd Amendment rights as a matter of Constitutional law, an argument that you should be convicted of a 922(g)(1) offense anyway because you didn’t petition the government to give you what you’re already constitutionally entitled to is scary.
Look at Ray Luna.
Ray was convicted of a simple drug possession felony (not trafficking, just having it in his pocket). Years later, he was caught with a gun and charged as an 18 USC 922(g) felon in possession. The District Court dismissed the indictment, holding that disarmament over a mere possession conviction – even a felony one– violated Ray’s 2nd Amendment rights.
The government – the same government that will grant or deny you your 2nd Amendment rights – appealed to the 5th Circuit, arguing that it had information in its possession that Ray had really been trafficking drugs, despite the fact that he had not been charged with that. Even if he had not, the US Attorney contended, drug possession was analogous to colonial-era laws regulating trafficking in tobacco.
Last week, the 5th Circuit agreed with the District Court and threw out the indictment:
We consider only whether Luna’s predicate felony supports disarmament… For the purposes of assessing [a defendant’s] predicate offenses under 922(g)(1), we may consider prior convictions that are ‘punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year… Against the government’s request to ‘account [for] [the defendant’s] entire record, which is necessary to properly assess the extent of his violent conduct,’ we reject such an invitation and instead confine our inquiry to [the defendant’s prior] conviction—the only predicate 922(g)(1) offense—based on the rule of orderliness.
Remember that time you laid out little Susie Derkins with a snowball when you were both in 1st grade? If you’re convicted of a nonviolent white-collar crime 40 years in the future, you can bet the DOJ will resurrect the snowball incident as proof that you should be denied possession of grandpa’s antique .22.
Some 2nd Amendment protection this plan offers: Sending the DOJ foxes to guard the 2nd Amendment henhouse.
Federal Register, Application for Relief From Disabilities Imposed by Federal Laws With Respect to the Acquisition, Receipt, Transfer, Shipment, Transportation, or Possession of Firearms (Aug 20)
US v Luna, Case No 25-40272, 2026 USApp LEXIS 25846 (5th Cir. Aug 24, 2026)
<><>
J6 BOP PRISONER GETS PARDON, THEN SUES FCI ELKTON FOR LOUSY MEDICAL CARE
A retired Pennsylvania firefighter who threw a fire extinguisher that hit two police officers during the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US. Capitol has sued FCI Elkton for failing to treat his numerous medical ailments, eventually leading to surgery and chronic pain.
Robert Sanford was one of about 1,500 people President Trump pardoned for crimes committed during the Jan 6 attack.
Bob was sentenced in 2023 to four years and four months in prison for throwing the fire extinguisher at officers defending the Capitol while calling them “traitors.” He got out in October 2024 after the BOP filed a compassionate release motion asking his sentencing judge to release him about 19 months early on a 52-month sentence because of Bob’s undisclosed “terminal medical condition.” The court filing redacted the medical condition.
After his release, Trump pardoned Bob and about 1,500 fellow rioters.
Bob’s lawsuit says he was fine when he arrived at the prison. In early 2024, he developed worsening back pain that went untreated despite multiple requests for medical care, the lawsuit says.
A doctor prescribed a steroid in May 2024, but it did not help, according to the lawsuit. In July, Bob reported that the pain was so severe that he struggled to walk. Later that month, he returned to the doctor in a wheelchair and was again prescribed steroids. The wheelchair was replaced with a cane, the lawsuit says.
He returned to the doctor, who accused him of faking his illness and had him thrown into the SHU, according to the lawsuit.
After an X-ray on Aug 1, Bob was misdiagnosed with arthritis in his hip and hip impingement syndrome, the lawsuit says. He fell while using a walker the next day. Despite his pleas for help, Bob says, he was not seen by prison doctors for four days.
They finally sent him to a nearby hospital, where Bob was found to have serious blood clots, a fractured hip and lung cancer, according to the lawsuit.
Seriously hurting but accused of faking it? Who’s ever heard of such a thing happening at the BOP?
Sanford v FCI Elkton, Case No 4:26-cv-02034-S (ND Ohio, filed May 18, 2026)
<><>
SENTENCING COMMISSION DREAMS BIG, DISAPPOINTS THOSE WHO WOULD JUST LIKE A LITTLE PROGRESS
The US Sentencing Commission adopted its priorities for the coming 2027 Amendment cycle last week.
What’s missing are any concrete proposals to reconsider guidelines on meth purity, sex offenses, or felon-in-possession, to name a few.
The USSC said it intends to “undertake an evaluation of the guidelines and federal sentencing practices in light of the Commission’s mission set forth in the Sentencing Reform Act, the statutory purposes of sentencing in 18 USC 3553(a)(2), and relevant legal developments that have occurred in the past four decades.”
The USSC also expects to undertake a comprehensive review of its Rules of Procedure. As part of the priority, it expects to review current practices and consider possible changes regarding what Commission work is conducted in public, what policymaking materials should be made public; how stakeholder and public involvement is structured; and what analyses supporting agency policymaking are released publicly.
Having the USSC decide to do more than walk into its meeting room, hold a couple of unanimous votes on guideline changes, and call it a wrap in under 20 minutes would be a good idea. Likewise, when an idea – such as changing the meth purity guidelines – dies, a public funeral where the reasons for the rejection are explained would only be fair to those the Commission likes to call its “stakeholders.”
USSC, Final Priorities for Amendment Cycle (Aug 27)
<><>
ALICE SAYS, ‘DON’T GET SCAMMED’
President Trump’s pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson warned prisoners that scammers in the booming clemency industry are pretending to be her and are asking for money and promising results they can’t deliver.
Johnson, who was named by Trump as his pardon czar in February 2025, said, “If someone contacts you claiming to represent me and asks for money or sensitive information, please report it immediately to law enforcement,” she wrote in a post on the X formerly known as Twitter. “People seeking a second chance deserve hope – not exploitation. Please help me warn others.”
The clemency road used to run through the DOJ Office of Pardon Attorney. But now, as the San Juan Daily Star reported last week, Attorney General Todd Blanche admits that Trump “exercises the constitutional power independently and does not seek his approval or guidance, even as Trump’s second term clemency record faces mounting criticism for its scale, beneficiaries and political overtones.”
“President Trump has a right and indeed an obligation under the Constitution of the United States to determine whether a pardon is appropriate,” Blanche said. “He doesn’t need my permission…”
Trump’s second-term clemency grants have reached unprecedented levels, including politicians, donors and celebrities (but few prisoners). According to former DOJ Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer, Trump has forgiven more than $1.5 billion in criminal debts, 150% more in financial penalties eliminated by President Biden over his entire term.
And Alice wonders where the scammers are coming from…
X formerly known as Twitter, Alice Marie Johnson @alicemariefree
San Juan Daily Star, During PR visit, Blanche defends Trump’s expansive use of pardons (Aug 28)
<><>
The LISA Newsletter is copyright 2026, LISA Foundation, PO Box 636, Norwalk OH 44857.
We use pseudonyms for defendants who are currently locked up.
PLEASE SHARE THIS NEWSLETTER