Former U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, who is serving a 10-year federal prison stint for a complex campaign corruption scheme, is seeking a presidential pardon amid the growing coronavirus pandemic.

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The 63-year-old Clear Lake Republican firebrand is serving his sentence at a low-security facility in Beaumont where the Bureau of Prisons has yet to report any cases. His wife, Patti Stockman, however, states in a video made April 1 that her husband said the first case had been diagnosed at an adjoining federal prison in Beaumont.

His wife made a plea this week, along with several former cabinet members, ex-congressmembers and other evangelical and conservative officials, for compassionate release, saying he is among the nonviolent “sitting ducks” who are especially vulnerable and should be pardoned. They add that Stockman could die if exposed due to diabetes and lung scarring as a result of asthma. He is also overweight and has high blood pressure, his wife said.

A petition by 50 conservative leaders calls Stockman “a perfect example of a prisoner who fits criteria of who should be removed from prison.” The letter notes his “intense Christian faith,” and “the extreme length of the judge’s sentence,” and says he is not eligible for release under the First Step Act.

While inmates around the country have requested compassionate and early releases through the courts or the federal Bureau of Prisons’ new protocol outlined last month by Attorney General William Barr, they have been slow in coming. Lawyers said Stockman has tried an alternate route.

Jeffrey Crouch, an American University professor who wrote a book on presidential pardons, said the appeal is not falling on deaf ears.

“Former Rep. Stockman is a high-profile Republican and a convicted white-collar offender who enjoys support for presidential mercy from a list of leading conservatives,” Crouch said. “If President Trump decided to pardon him, the decision would fit in well with others Trump has made regarding who should receive clemency.”

Crouch noted, “What is unusual here is the presence of the COVID-19 pandemic: Trump might now have political cover to use clemency as an act of mercy to assist Stockman and perhaps others in a similar position.”

Patti Stockman, who accompanied her husband to the Houston federal courthouse during a monthlong trial, made a video appeal directly addressing President Donald Trump.

She begins with “Hello Mr. President” and thanks Trump for his “terrific leadership in leading the nation through this,” adding, “who knows how many lives have been saved as a result of your actions.” She draws a parallel between what her husband did during his two non-consecutive terms in Congress.

“He came to Washington to do what you came to do,” she says, “upset the apple cart” and expose missteps of the Obama administration. She notes that, from her vantage point, the former Texas congressman was the target of unjust Justice Department investigation, just like Trump.

She says her husband is brave and has “stared in the face of a gun barrel” in war-torn regions of the Middle East and Africa. “But, I can tell you, President Trump, he is not fearless in the face of this virus.

"Mr. President, I ask you please to intervene so that this sentence does not become a death penalty. This punishment does not fit the conviction,” she said.

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Stockman was convicted in a wide-ranging scheme that involved spying on a potential GOP rival at the statehouse in Austin and misspending charitable contributions from conservative donors on shopping trips, dolphin boat tours, hot air balloon rides and 500 copies of his brother’s custom -made pop-up Advent books.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor who has tracked Stockman’s career said, “The long and orderly process for getting pardons has changed under the Trump administration where the president himself often makes these decisions alone, often for political reasons.”

He said Stockman might be lucky given who is working on Pennsylvania Avenue: “The likelihood of getting a pardon is low in general but with a White House prone to erratic decision making, it’s hard to say for sure.”

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gabrielle.banks@chron.com