SEIU's Tyrone Freeman Spends New Years in Federal Prison

Yankton Federal Prison Camp, South Dakota

SEIU’s Tyrone Freeman rang in the New Year in a federal prison in Yankton, South Dakota, according to court records (see below).

In case you’re not familiar with Yankton, it’s a town of 14,000 people where the temperature was a balmy -5 degrees farenheit on New Years Day. 

Here’s what one writer says about the prison, which houses 825 male inmates: "The winters are tough, and the nearest city of any size is at least an hour away.”

Yankton Prison in the springtime

One of Freeman's fellow inmates is Shawn Merriman. He’s serving 12 years for masterminding a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of $20 million between 1995 and 2009. Merriman, who was featured on a TV program "American Greed," is scheduled to be released in 2020.

While Freeman cools his heels in Yankton, a secret source continues to fund Freeman's multi-million-dollar legal bills.

Court records indicate that Mayer Brown LLP -- a global law firm that defended him in his criminal trial -- has parachuted two new attorneys into the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, where they're trying to appeal Freeman's 33-month prison sentence.

Dan Himmelfarb, Mayer Brown LLP

Observers speculate that SEIU is secretly paying Freeman's giant bills as part of a deal to keep him from ratting out his purple co-conspirators such as Andy Stern, Eliseo Medina, Mary Kay Henry and Dave Regan.

One of Freeman's new attorneys is Dan Himmelfarb, a partner in Mayer Brown's DC offices. Himmelfarb specializes in appeals and has “filed more than 200 merits and petition-stage briefs in the US Supreme Court and has argued… 12 cases in the US Supreme Court...,” according to the firm's website. In other words, this guy charges beaucoup bucks -- likely more than $2,000 an hour.

Who's paying the massive bills??

   Court document verfiying that SEIU's Tyrone Freeman has surrendered himself to Yankton Federal Prison...