Political Memes

Donald Westlake wrote a great novel years ago called Help I Am Being Held Prisoner. In the book, the main character gets sent to prison for a practical joke gone wrong. He happens to fall in with a group of prisoners who, it turns out, have an escape tunnel to the outside. Rather than using it to actually escape, which would expose the existence of the tunnel and subject them to a manhunt, they instead use it to go out and about in the real world while making sure they're back in the prison just for morning and evening roll call. That way, they serve out their sentences while still being able to live life and commit more crimes to fund the entire operation.

I always wonder if a high-profile, obvious intelligence asset like Maxwell is given a similar situation in federal prison. Maybe she's actually able to live a comfortable life somewhere nearby in anonymity, and they just trot her out in the prison once in a while for show. She could spend her free time hanging out with Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Jeffery Epstein (just kidding - possibly).