Bill Pryor, from badpuppy.com
Federal circuit judge and former Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor is among President-Elect Donald Trump's top two choices to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a new report at al.com. The news comes as we are set to publish a second nude photograph of Pryor from his picture gallery that appeared at the gay-pornography site badpuppy.com in the late 1990s.Pryor, from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (covering Alabama, Georgia, and Florida), and Diane Sykes, from the Seventh Circuit (covering Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin) lead Trump's list SCOTUS possibilities. The Eleventh Circuit is based in Atlanta, but Pryor's duty station is at the Hugo Black Courthouse in Birmingham, and he resides in Vestavia Hills.
We have reported several times recently that Pryor probably is at or near the top of Trump's list because of Pryor's close ties to U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who is the president-elect's choice to be attorney general.
Pryor is an ardent opponent of gay rights, even though his nude image (taken while he was in college at Northeast Louisiana University, now Louisiana Monroe) has appeared at multiple gay-porn print publications, along with digital sites -- the most prominent being Bad Puppy, which is considered a "super store" of gay porn. We broke the story of Pryor's ties to gay porn in September 2013, and roughly one month later, Alabama deputies kidnapped me from our own home and tossed me in the Shelby County Jail for five months. Was that due to my reporting on Pryor (and perhaps other reports I was working on)? I have no doubt the answer is yes.
In recent weeks, I've tracked down multiple individuals who knew Pryor from his days in Louisiana. They report that the nude photos are, in fact, of THE Bill Pryor, and they report extensive details about their relationships with him. One of those relationships was of an intimate nature, and the man involved is willing to provide details.
That suggests Pryor is little more than a glorified organized-crime figure. We also are preparing one or more revealing posts about dubious associations in Sessions' past -- ties that the Alabama mainstream press (MSM) has ignored for years.
Today's report about Pryor's standing in TrumpWorld, which originated with CNN, confirms our reporting that he was a strong candidate to replace Scalia. From al.com's version of the report:
Donald Trump has reportedly narrowed his Supreme Court choices down to two candidates: Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Diane Sykes and 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge - and former Alabama Attorney General - William "Bill" Pryor.
The two judges have emerged from a list of 20 possible replacement for late Justice Antonin Scalia, CNN reported. Trump transition aide Jason Miller would not confirm the report, only saying the Supreme Court vacancy is "actively being discussed."
"The President-elect, he had previously put out a list of 20 very qualified individuals from which he would select. I know that they have continued to narrow that list down," Miller said. "He himself has said that's probably a shorter list of five or six folks that are near the top of that, that's being narrowed down to. And again, but this is another one where it's an absolute utmost priority, so we need to make sure we get this one right."
Pryor holds such extremist, right-wing views -- and his qualifications are so thin (he had never been a judge at any level, not even traffic court) -- that it required a recess appointment from George W. Bush to get the Alabamian's foot inside the federal judiciary door. It long has been reported that the appointment was a reward for Pryor (while Alabama AG) launching an investigation of Democratic Governor Don Siegelman, which led to a dubious federal prosecution that has Siegelman now residing at a U.S. prison in Oakdale, Louisiana.
Judge Bill Pryor
From today's al.com story:Pryor, 54, is a Mobile native and Tulane Law School graduate. He served as Alabama's Attorney General from 1997-2004, becoming the youngest state AG in the U.S. In 2005, Pryor was nominated by President George W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals and was appointed after a contentious hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Pryor was eventually confirmed on a 53 to 45 vote after a brokered deal between Republicans and Democrats.
From the original CNN story:
Pryor, a staunch conservative, called Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision making abortion legal, the "worst abomination in the history of constitutional law."
The 54-year-old Tulane Law University grad sits on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Neither CNN nor al.com mentioned Pryor's ties to gay porn, even though my original reporting received widespread attention in the Web press. The issue could prove to be Pryor's largest hurdle to reaching SCOTUS. Evidence suggests Pryor failed to disclose his nude photographs -- all federal nominees are asked if there is anything in their past that could embarrass them or the president who nominated them -- and that likely would mean he lied to the FBI and to Congress. That is a crime that Pryor apparently has gotten away with once. Is he ready to follow that risky path again?
The answer to that question almost certainly is yes, given Pryor's ambition, sense of entitlement, hunger for power, and greatly inflated assessment of his abilities. But we soon will be publishing more information about his Bad Puppy days. It will be interesting to see if the MSM, Congressional leaders, Democrat opponents, or others take notice. It should disqualify Pryor on the spot for SCOTUS, and a serious investigation likely would get him tossed off the bench and prosecuted for multiple felonies.
