WASHINGTON – Former Rep. Chris Collins appears so desperate to remain out of prison that his lawyers are striking a different tone than President Trump and embracing the words of Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Hours after Trump on Thursday posted a video in which he appeared to downplay the risk of Covid-19 to America's seniors, Collins' lawyers filed a brief in federal court in Manhattan that said his age – he's 70 – and pre-existing health conditions make him especially susceptible to contracting the virus.
"No matter what the level of precautions, there is a significant and unjustifiable risk that Mr. Collins will contract Covid-19 in prison," the Collins lawyers wrote. "If he does, his age alone makes him at least five times more likely to be hospitalized and 90 times more likely to die than someone in their 20s."
That's a more dire tone than the one Trump struck in the video, where he said: "We're taking care of our seniors. You're not vulnerable but they like to say the vulnerable but you're the least vulnerable but for this one thing, you are vulnerable. So am I."
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Then, without identifying the medicine that he said helped him recover from Covid-19, Trump told America's seniors: "You're going to get the same medicine. You're going to get it free, no charge."
The difference in tone between Trump and Collins' lawyers is striking because Collins was the first House member to endorse Trump in 2016.
Collins remained one of Trump's most televised defenders, until the lawmaker's August 2018 arrest on insider trading charges.
Collins, who resigned and pleaded guilty a year ago, was sentenced in January to 26 months in prison, but the pandemic delayed his incarceration date three times. He's now set to go to a prison in Pensacola on Tuesday, but his lawyers are trying to get the judge to delay his imprisonment to Dec. 8 or to revise his sentence to home confinement.
The latest documents filed by Collins' lawyers came a day after the prosecutor overseeing the case filed a letter telling the judge: "It is time for Collins to begin his prison sentence."
Prosecutors said there had been no Covid-19 cases at the Pensacola prison, but in their filing, Collins' lawyers said four prison staffers and three prisoners have recently tested positive.
Moreover, the Collins lawyers said conditions are dangerous throughout the federal prison system. To prove their point, they filed a letter that Warren, of Massachusetts, and Sen. Richard Durbin, a fellow Democrat from Illinois, recently sent to Attorney General William Barr and the head of the federal Bureau of Prisons.
"You must do more to protect Bureau of Prisons staff and vulnerable inmates from infection due to the coronavirus," they wrote. "Too many have died, and too many are suffering needlessly."
There's irony in Collins' legal team citing a letter co-signed by Warren, an ideological opposite of Collins who, about two weeks after his arrest, proposed a bill barring lawmakers from owning individual stocks.
"Enough of the spectacle of ... herds of congressmen caught up in insider trading schemes," Warren said at the time.
